http://www.worldoceansday.org
is tomorrow and the theme is twinned with the Environment Day just passed, of “Preventing plastic pollution and
encouraging solutions for a healthy ocean”
As one of the worst offenders of putting
plastics in the Ocean around us, we need to be far more aware of what we can do
to stop it. At the last flood there was NO attempt to stop the plastic floating
on the water from reaching the sea, for example from the Kelani River, which
meant that due to the flood, other debri that accumulated on normal ground that
was flooded, and streams and canals all went into the sea through rivers such
as the Kelani.
It is simply disgraceful that we don’t have
a state that takes action unless someone higher up demands it. With the country
having a beleaguered President and Prime Minister facing all sorts of survival
issues and threats and allegations, they have hardly had the time to be
concerned about the survival of the planet or Sri Lanka for that matter.
In
their absence no one not even the Secretaries of the Ministry of the
Environment have TAKEN THE INITIATIVE to ensure the public at large are aware
of the significance of the ocean around us for our very survival and taken
steps to have half the country that lives within 20 KM of the sea to take part
in beach cleanups so that we are all made aware of the importance of this to
both our tourism industry, and to the development and growth of this Country.
So please, those who at least who have
taken the time to read this, please make those around you aware that Sri Lanka
in particular needs the Oceans more than most countries, and a dirty, polluted
ocean will eventually come to haunt us, and more importantly the generation NOT
BORN YET who has to face the crap we have left for them to clean up.
Why would another generation want to
clean the mess we left for them. Don’t you understand that they will curse us
all their lives, that we have made their lives so miserable.
I have lived long enough to know that 50
years ago, I used to go to the beach at least once a week if not more and I can
honestly tell you, I have never had to see any unpleasant stuff on the beacj
and the most the tide brought it was a fruit of a mangrove tree or a coconut
tree that was floating on the water. How times have changed and I cringe when I
walk on the beach these days. Sri Lanka has yet to import those huge beach
cleaners that places that the USA have had for 50+ years to clean the beach of
all debri other than the sand, by sucking it up!
3 comments:
If plastics is the theme of the week worldwide, we simply have done nothing this week to make a dent in our abuse of plastic. Shameful, I am ashamed too.
Let us pledge to stop buying single use plastic bottles as a start. That is the least we can do in a country that is really not short of water. We just don't know how to protect it and refill our ground water basins, when we have excess rains, we just send it down river and allow flooding as that is easier.
Obviously this event has passed unnoticed in Sri Lanka. Easy for public officials to forget, so they have to do less for their pay check, even if it means missing another chance of publicity of saving our environment
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