The earliest radio song I can remember loving was Julian Lennon’s Saltwater. I can distinctly remember being five or six years old, standing in the middle of the living room with my eyes closed, mesmerised and haunted:
We climb the highest mountain,
We’ll make the desert bloom;
We’re so ingenious
We can walk on the moon.
But when I hear of how
The forests have died,
Saltwater wells in my eyes.
Every verse begins as a love letter to the earth, a panegyric of humanity’s achievements; and ends with the marring of the planet by the genius of our species. It reminds me of a quote:
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
– Helen Keller
I never knew why I loved that song when I was five. I grew up with a deep connection to nature, on a small bush acreage full of wildlife, and resented any suggestion that I took it for granted. I knew human beings were devastating the environment, but my corner of the world looked pretty clean so I figured we must be doing okay. Over time, the lyrics of the song became more distant. Even after growing up and moving to the city, I still did all the things that I thought were right for the environment – putting things to be recycled in the right bin, not brushing my teeth with the water running – and beyond that I questioned very little else about the way I was living my life.
Then one day, casually surfing the web, I saw this:
On Midway Island, in the North Pacific Ocean, albatross mothers feed their babies with food they’ve gathered in the sea just as they have for countless generations. Up until the last few decades, everything they would find in the ocean would have actually been food, or at least biodegradable matter. Now, there is so much plastic debris in the ocean that the albatross are feeding their young on small plastic pieces which clog their stomachs until they die of starvation or toxic poisoning.
Like many others, this was the image that jolted me awake. My subsequent frenzy of research into plastic pollution revealed even more horror. The worst and best part was the realisation that, in being a consumer of cheap, disposable plastic stuff, I am responsible for those horrors. I say the worst and the best because of this: responsibility isn’t the same as guilt. Guilt paralyses you in a situation; responsibility gives you the ability to rectify it. If I am responsible for the problem, I can also be responsible for the solution.
Julian Lennon’s lyrics came back to me after more than twenty years:
What will I think of me
The day that I die?
What would I think of myself if, having seen the realities of the world my species has created, I did nothing? If I continued blaming someone else – the people who don’t recycle as diligently as I do, the people who make the plastic products, the people who wilfully litter – and simply carried on? What would my children think of me if the joy I found in nature as a child could be nothing more than a story to them, because I did nothing? What will I think of me?
In the year since seeing the photo of the albatross, my partner, Jonathan, and I have taken a long, hard look at the habits and objects that fill our lives. We’ve made changes to our habits – not huge ones, not perfect ones – but sustainable ones, and we plan on making a lot more. The purpose of this blog is to record and share our successes and mistakes, so that others might feel more supported in making changes for themselves. I will also share any wisdom that inspires me from the growing online community of people striving to live plastic-free or zero-waste lifestyles.
Unexpectedly, I have felt a greater sense of purpose in my life over the past year than ever before. Perhaps, as it has been noted by others, it is appropriate that the albatross has been the symbol and impetus for action for so many. In the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner:
Until my ghastly tale is told, this heart within me burns.
what will I think of me 