When wildlife filmmaker Rebecca Hosking found hundreds of albatross chicks dying on a remote Hawaiian atoll amid a sea of rubbish, she was appalled. Now she's leading a small Devon town's revolution against the plastic carrier bag.
For wildlife filmmaker Rebecca Hosking, the woman at the centre of a Devon town's attempt to give up plastic bags, the Laysan albatross, is the "supreme being of the ocean".
Majestic in flight, it travels thousands of miles each year, often disappearing to sea for months at a time. When the birds mate, they form partnerships for life - a union preceded by an outlandishly comic courtship ritual. "I would defy anyone not to fall in love with an albatross once they have watched it," she says.
Visiting the bird's breeding grounds on Midway Island, site of the world's largest marine national park opened by none other than President George Bush, should, therefore, have been a highlight of the year she spent filming a BBC documentary on the people and wildlife of Hawaii.
But what the 33-year-old witnessed on the shores of that white sand atoll 1,000 miles from Honolulu was a nightmarish vision.
"It was impossible to walk in a straight line without standing on them - the dead chicks were everywhere," she recalls, still clearly shaken by the memory many months later. "I felt cross, angry and sad all at the same time," she says.
Two-fifths of the 500,000 Laysan chicks born on Midway each year die. Though not exclusively the cause of this devastating mortality rate, one of the prime reasons, she believes, are the vast and growing slicks of plastic that pollute the world's oceans.
After a couple of days in the hot sun, the bodies of the chicks start to rot and the cause of their death becomes all too apparent amid the stench. Children's toys, plastic bags, even asthma inhalers, spill from the putrefying carcasses of the birds. In the course of an hour spent combing the body-strewn beach, she and a colleague gathered 400 cigarette lighters and 800 toothbrushes.
The chicks' mothers have often flown 2,000 miles to forage for this deadly meal, bringing it back to the nest.
"By instinct, they believe that anything colourful on the surface of the water is squid so they pick it up, swallow it and fly the long journey back to regurgitate it into the mouths of their offspring. Their stomachs fill up with plastic and they die of dehydration and starvation," she says. It was enough to move her to tears - and action.
Back home in Modbury, a small rural town on the main road from Torquay to the pretty South Hams coast, the international media was out in force yesterday to witness what many hope will come to be seen as a landmark day in the battle against the scourge of plastic products that litter the world and the devastating effect they have on the marine ecology.
From today, all 43 of the town's shops, from the local Co-Op to the butcher's, delicatessen and florist will be offering an ecologically sound alternative to the toxic and enviromentally ruinnous plastic carrier bag.
Ms Hosking is the driving force behind the change - the first time a European community has sought to turn its back on plastic bags. While what she saw many thousands of miles away in the Pacific left her greatly moved, it was experiencing the whole thing over again back home that convinced her it was time to do something.
On a snorkelling trip during a break in the editing of her film, she realised that the seas she had swum in while growing up as a child were equally blighted with plastic bags.
The plan was hatched over a pint at the local pub with Mackgills delicatessen owner Adam Searle and Brownston Gallery proprietor Sue Sturton. She urged the two to watch her film and see for themselves the dreadful impact that plastic was having on the wildlife of Hawaii, not least the Laysan albatross. They were soon convinced.
"They said they were not going to use plastic bags any more and I said I would try and convince more people to go plastic bag free. Sue lent me the gallery to show the film and I invited every single trader in the town to come and watch it, including the local supermarket," she said, setting out to find the most environmentally friendly alternative to plastic.
"People needed convincing - quite rightly - they have got businesses to run and I knew I was asking a big deal from them."
But after 36 shopkeepers turned up to watch the film, they too were sold on the idea, agreeing to implement the change by a simple show of hands. From today, reusable bags will be on sale everywhere in Modbury at their cost price of £1.50 for a small Fairtrade cotton bag and £3.95 for a larger one. Biodegradable carriers will cost 5p each, while those bags that do enter the town will be recycled.
Business owners and customers seemed equally excited by the move. Mandy Rolt, owner of the cafe and gift shop Top O' The Steps, said: "This is a great thing for Modbury, everyone has been so positive and come together to make this possible. The interest has been unbelievable, I had one woman here on holiday from Northern Ireland who bought 18 just to take back."
Orders for the bags have already been taken from Australia and America and the trial has featured in news bulletins in America, France, Switzerland, India and Russia. More importantly, other towns and villages in Britain are looking to climb aboard the bag-free bandwagon.
Two other communities in Devon have been in touch, another near Basingstoke and one close to Hastings expressed interest yesterday.
"Environmentally, this is a tiny, baby step," admits Ms Hosking. "But socially, it is a huge leap."
Mankind's appetite for the plastic bag is deeply daunting. It is estimated that one million are used every minute - their average working life just 12 minutes before they are discarded. Every year each person on the planet will consume 300 of them - nearly one each every day. In terms of their environmental cost, the figures are equally stark, says Ms Hosking. "Plastic stays in the environment for between 500 and 1,000 years. Every plastic item that was ever made is still in existence. Some of it starts to break down - maybe into tiny pieces but it is still there."
The Modbury experiment will last six months at first. If it proves successful, as seems likely from the interest generated on its first day, it will continue. Many will be hoping that its effects will be felt well beyond this tranquil patch of south Devon.
Ms Hosking, one of just three female wildlife filmmakers in Britain, believes much can be learnt from the Hawaiian islanders' attitudes.
"People have a love for the island and a love for the marine environment that is totally at odds with the way we live in the throwaway West. They see the environment not in terms of a single species but as an entire eco-system - they say 'look after the eco-system and the animals will look after themselves'. They believe that if you have the privilege of enjoying something you also have the responsibility of looking after it," she said.
But even in this society, where knowledge of the sea and the land are inextricably linked and where, for thousands of years, sound environmental practices were the key to survival, homegrown problems still exist. And, despite the best efforts of the powerful environmental movement, many animals continue to suffer as plastic discarded in China or other parts of Asia is swept by ocean currents across the northern Pacific to land on their shores.
She recalls seeing dolphins cavorting in the water off Maui playing with a plastic bag as if it were an underwater football and later seeing dead dolphins washed up on the beaches - a bag covering their blow holes.
She also remembers the day she watched a heavily protected green turtle choke to death on a plastic bag in front of her.
Or the humpback whales arriving in their Hawaii breeding grounds exhausted after dragging huge chains of plastic debris behind them for thousands of miles from their summer feeding territory in Alaska.
Then there were the Hawaiian monk seals - the only tropical seal in the world and one of the 100 rarest species on earth. Conservationists say it is down to its last decade or two despite surviving 15 million years since pre-historic times. Marine scientists identify the remaining population by the scars left on their bodies by plastic packing bands.
But change could be in the air and it is grassroots change not the compulsion of governments or bureaucrats.
"Modbury is just a traditional farming town, it is not green at all. Everyone has been saying that nothing has happened here since Cromwell's time so if we can do it anyone can. Plastic is not a bad thing if it is used properly. It requires low energy to produce and lasts a very long time. It just has to be used for the right product.
"But even if no other town goes over I am still incredibly proud of Modbury and what the people here have achieved. If we can inspire one other small town which inspires another one and so on, then this could really snowball.
"That is when the supermarkets will have to listen. At the moment it is working brilliantly - I would recommend any town to do it." It is a call that many might well choose to answer.
source: 2may2007
A small town in southwest Britain has joined the growing movement to ban plastic bags in what environmentalists believe is a first for Europe.
Shopkeepers in Modbury, a town of 1,500 about 360 kilometres southwest of London, began the switchover on Saturday, offering paper or cloth bags instead. The town has also declared an amnesty on plastic bags, encouraging residents to turn them in for recycling.
Rebecca Hosking, a wildlife camerawoman who lives in Modbury, encouraged the bag ban, saying the bags were wreaking havoc on marine life. She said she didn't expect the transition to be too difficult.
"Modbury's quite an old-fashioned town and a lot of people have wicker baskets to go out shopping anyway," Hosking told Sky News television.
Manitoba town first to ban bag in Canada In April, the northern Manitoba town of Leaf Rapids became the first municipality in Canada to outlaw the use of plastic shopping bags. Earlier in March, San Francisco became the first city in North America to ban the of traditional grocery bags. The law prohibits large grocery stores and drugstores from using non-recyclable and non-biodegradable bags made from petroleum products.
The bags have also been banned in Bangladesh and Mumbai where storm sewers stuffed with plastic bags were deemed partially responsible for massive floods in 2002 and 2005. Other districts in South Africa, Ireland and Taiwan have also discouraged the use the plastic bags with fees and taxes.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group, about 500 billion plastic bags are discarded around the world annually. It is estimated a traditional plastic bag will break down and dissolve over the course of 1,000 years.
From: CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) 30apr2007
source: 2may2007
|
To
send Mindfully.org your comments, questions, and suggestions click
here |