I’m afraid I’m really failing in this endeavour and this blogpost is merely to keep me honest about that failure. The weekly shop is the seemingly insurmountable enemy. Perishables come in plastic boxes that take up huge volume in the rubbish (Our bin is not separated, hence am concentrating on reduce and re-use.) My hopes of attracting bees to superpollinator plants have fallen foul of the difficulty of cultivating such plants outside right into marine air. I’ve even slipped back with the fizzy drinks, rather than pursuing the option of getting diet coke style flavours for the soda stream, which would bring all the household on board with using it.

We have phased out the plastic milk cartons, which is good (though the cardboard replacements have Tetra Pak) but I really want to see a reduction in the throughput of rubbish, especially when most of it is wildlife-killing plastic.

I have followed the Cork Greens facebook page and I have made improvements in other domestic areas. But it’s really not enough. I need to push through with the philosophy of going to the butcher counter for meat so it’s not wrapped in plastic, getting plants outside, and continuing the conscious decision not to buy plastic bottles when eating out.

It’s easy to despair and reckon my actions will make no difference anyway; pitiable as they are, they’re still not followed by lots of other people and so are useless. Not to mention the behaviour of farmers setting fires and burning wildlife alive, without punishment or penalty. But the feeling of powerlessness at this world of excess isn’t good either. For my own mental health I need to continue to engage, even if it is only to self-chastise at my ongoing failure to help nature at all.

Well quick update as per my last post. I bought the Soda Stream as per advice from Headstuff as part of the War on Plastic. It was like time travelling back to my childhood. It’s handy in that you don’t need to plug it in anywhere and five good presses of the button and you have fizzy water. If it’s tap water there will be an aftertaste but you can avoid that by getting a filter for your water if you so wish. Unfortunately I ruined my lo-plastic ideal by inadvertently purchasing a bottle of dilute fruit cordial. Ok, it’s LESS plastic but still not ideal.

Also I will not have buy-in from all members of the household until I find a diet coke flavour 🙂

Next on the list: check out the local farmer’s market for purchasing vegetables and look into using shower gels and cleaning products that do not use plastic e.g. Lush. Also I think there is a new milkman service. We live in an apartment so not sure if that will work but checking it out.

This has not got much to do with writing or books but has been increasingly on my mind the last few years. It has become evident that the presence of humanity and the maintenance of our throwaway global culture has wreaked disaster on the world we depend on. Every battle to save nature and wildlife, or conserve resources, is blocked and frustrated and battled.

Along with others, I am in my own small way part of that problem. My first world life is an imposition on the environment. I use plastics and drive a car and the electricity I use is powered by the fossil fuel which environmentalists and scientists are urging us to keep in the ground. I consume the foodstuffs which are intensively farmed at an expense to hedgerows and wildlife. I am a bystander – worse, an active user – while species are being destroyed and lands gouged out because we want convenience, now, always.

I am not a revolutionary and I will never be “green enough”. I lack the sheer guts of Ellie O’Byrne, who along with her family, went entirely plastic free for a month. (I think it says something when you read how difficult the system made it for her to do that.) If I try I will only depress myself with failure, as when I was at college and tried to change my personality to make myself more reserved and interesting to people. (Note: that doesn’t work unless you don’t care what people think.)

What I will try and do is small, local things – one every fortnight – to improve my impact and interactions with nature. I know it is hopeless against the behemoth of The Economy, which we are all supposed to worship. After reading the Headstuff article on reducing plastics (warning – starts with a lot of info about the plastics in the sea which may trigger depression on reading) my first action will be to purchase a Soda Stream as we consume a lot of fizzy drinks and it would cut down on a major source of plastic. I undertake to do that within twenty four hours of this post.

I am not by any means “virtue signalling” – I am very unvirtuous in this regard. I fall short in every way. I’m just hoping that if I say what I’m doing it might spark the idea in others. I will try and blog every fortnight about a thing I have done as it helps accountability. I will do it during Lent, where I have established a custom of abstaining from social media, but not yet sure if I will blog during that time.