There is always the why – My why is I spend a huge amount of time in the outdoors, it has always been my way of thinking, finding my flow and having ideas.
This love of the county-side lead bizarrely from a carrier in hairdressing, one of the most unsustainable industry’s to another: packaging, environmentally better when considering food waste, not great when considering current human behaviour of how we dispose of waste, leading to littering on-land and bellow water. [link to un-sustainable goals]
I aim to develop packaging in the most environmentally sustainable way. Not an easy task when up against the big conglomerates who are mostly interested in the financial bottom line, and humans who throw their waste on the ground.
As a designer I work towards developing the functionality of packaging to encourage good behaviour, of disposing of packaging waste responsibly, reduce, reuse, recycle.
But what can I do to clean up the litter that is already in our envirment in green spaces, in urban environments looking unsightly and more importantly having an impact in my local environment the UK and more widely our planet? GROSS
The only thing I can do in my power is to get out there and spend time picking it up.
This is my frank journey of how I and my partner came to spending our downtime litter picking.
I share this with you in the hope that like the podcast ‘What it’s earth‘ who inspired me to buy a litter picker to go beech clean and then on from this take my litter picker with me whilst walking, you will do the same and become one of the crowd who set an example through doing!
Sorry to get heavy but it’s not enough to look after ourselves our own rubbish, its time for use to womble, setting an example to others and be proud doing it, making friends with the earth, our local habitat and fellow humans along the way.
Happy Wombeling.
Below are some links that have lead me along my journey.
On pack recycling labelling (OPRL)
Beech clean near you
Can we stop ignoring Demons and help our fellow Humans please?
Our first time time out with the litter picker was close to home, on my morning run route.
The area is the urban Norton, closish to Scarborough bay on the north east coast of England .
The destination I chose was a bridal way, however before we got there, there is a snicket which lead from the main road to a housing estate.
This snicker is about 200 m long ( I’m sure you remember running that distance at school)
The snicker was full of litter swag, so we got to work… within half an hour we had a good haul of waste to responsibly dispose. Most of the litter was crisp packets, sweet wrappers and snacks.
One could assume the litter was litter from children on there way too and from school. There is so much education needed to change behaviour.
Your thoughts are very welcome.
How do you think we can re-design our packaging using materials and graphics? change bad behaviour to responsible behaviour?
The Start of our litter pick 200m sprint
Thank you Stuart for helping collect our litter swag
Thank you for Reading.
All thoughts are my own and I welcome yours.
Treat others as you wanted to be treated
feet1st 