Monday, May 9, 2011

Environmental Message missed entirely!

So was appalled at the use of no less than seven containers per take-out lunch yesterday.  They were mainly the white polystyrene boxes - multiply that by say 70-100 lunches and the mind boggles at the mountain of waste AND the Rubbish Collectors of Georgetown are dragging their feet over the usual Late Payment again.
As per usual, those in charge of environmental issues like to zoom all over the world, pontificating while the message is totally missed locally-- perhaps if a realistic environmental tax on all plastic containers like 300% was lashed on the imports-- my friend in GRA assures me that it is a very lucrative market; then the locals could be 'persuaded' to think of local,environmentally- friendly containers. Recently a FB friend noted that the Rasta take-out has abandoned using Calabashes and moved to the above-mentioned polystyrene containers-- whatever happened to the Local Cardboard recycling (would you trust them?) plant? Also, the Food and Safety people moved in and banned the calabashes, which the Rastas were having difficulty obtaining anyway.

It is worrying about the disconnect between knowing what's right and actually doing it. A South African friend said that they also had the same problem and the Government there created a Character and motto- rather like the unsustained  'Lash It in de Bin' for the Cricket World Cup in 2007- and did an big drive within schools, I suppose as the parents were lost causes? Anyway-- the point is-- it seemed to work. The Government here did raise fines but then the usual racial discrimination of harassing  people by the unprofessional Police for Bribes to overlook incidents meant it died a quiet death! The lack of respect for others and oneself is quite sad-- and I am now thinking of the West Demerara incident of Noise Pollution whereby the Police did the right thing by requesting that the impromptu music be turned down as the Local Sai Baba Centre were holding a all night vigil for the death of their leader-- the music was turned back up when the Police left, and when they returned they had objects and verbal abuse hurled at them-- they responded by firing pellets-- the interesting thing is that one of the people injured was from New York-- he certainly would respect the NYC police-- then why come here and behave bad??  If he was just an innocent bystander, which I don't think he was, then he ought to have voted with his feet and moved away when the Music people persisted with their loud music- it's alarming how one swings to the Right in the face of seemingly belligerent Ignorance promoted by the Left-Wingers!

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