Nicole Felts

Have you ever felt so desperate for a breath, but felt like it is impossible to take one? Have you ever teetered on the edge and felt hopeless, uncertain of the existence of your future because you simply cannot breathe?

All you cared about was making money, and plastic was cheap. Quick and nasty, though I doubt you saw it as that when you began this journey. You probably saw a solution; all we see now is a problem.

Why was it necessary to invent and mass produce? What was wrong with recycling our glass milk bottles? Why could paper bags not continue to be used to pack our groceries? Why must we wrap literally everything, from our natural fruits and vegetables to our synthetic medicines, in plastic? What makes plastic so special that it is such a crucial component in everyone’s lives?

Even if you had known what the future held, would you have cared? Would you have changed your ways and your thoughts, and the path of the entire world? If all it took was one person to say no, would you have been the one to stand up for us all?

Would you have cared if you saw the icebergs of trash? Would you have cared when an endangered bird brings her chick a plastic toy to eat? Would you have cared when you saw that rivers are no longer translucent flowing waters but colourful mosaics of discarded plastic?

Or would you have continued to be selfish and make your millions so you could live in luxury while the millions of people of future generations suffer? While the millions of species of wildlife suffer? While the planet suffers?

We now live among more plastic than we do animals. We ingest microplastics and poison ourselves unknowingly and unwillingly, simply because we cannot escape them. There is too much plastic and not enough solutions. And yet even with this knowledge and awareness, we continue to remain stuck in our old ways, endlessly reliving our bad habits, refusing to see a better way of doing things.

We refuse to say that enough is enough. We refuse to stop. We refuse to hold ourselves accountable. After all, it is easier to sit there and watch the world be smothered than it is to stand up and make a change for the better.

What a marvellous invention indeed. Who would have ever guessed that the destruction of Earth would not be from an apocalypse brought by four horsemen, or a nuclear war, but instead by the suffocation of plastic?