Seeing plastic
I have a dog, her name is Sheba. For such a small animal, she has an incredible appetite for activity. This is a wonderful thing, as it ensures that I am outside, walking and running, on a daily basis. Much of this time is spent in my nearby park, Carlton Gardens, in Melbourne, Australia. This park speaks so much about the history of Melbourne — it’s design an expression of the boom Melbourne received from the Victorian Gold Rush.
It was on these walks with Sheba in early 2018, that I decided to give back to a park and a community that gives back so much to both myself and my dog. Each time I walked in the Gardens, I would spend time picking up some of the plastic debris that lay strewn around it. It’s beauty never grows old on me, so it seemed but a small gift in return.
Once I began this change, I quickly realised something — plastic was everywhere. Old and new, it existed through the layers of the park. If you can think of the plastic waste, then it was there. Once I saw it in the park, I then could not stop seeing it everywhere I walked. In my street, around the corner, in other parks, there was our modern packaging marvel — plastic.
I quickly extended the parameters of my mission with plastic. Now whenever I would take my dog for a walk, I aimed to pick up even just a few pieces on my way. I had seen cost of our modern capitalist system, and I could no longer unsee it.
In time my walks started to change. Where before I would put on my favourite podcasts, and ponder the marvels of the world. To instead, increasingly thinking about plastic, our relationship to it and how something has to change.
After a year of this journey, I have decided to chronicle some of the things I witness, my thoughts about plastic and where we might go in the future. In part it’s to help put order to my own thoughts, but also to contribute to the wider discourse on plastic.
Things are beginning to change, but I am not so sure people are ready to accept how much they need to change.
