.... I really don't care about what you think.

I don't care that you think a cocktail isn't a cocktail without a pretty straw.
I don't care that you like to line your bin with a plastic bag because you don't have to wipe out the bin.
I don't care that you hate having to remember to bring recycled bags to the supermarket.
I don't care that you like those cute little lunch packs with three layers of packing because the kids like them and you want to make them happy.

I. Just. Don't. Care.

I went on a rant this week and I'm still angry about it. We had cross country at my school this week, you know the one, where the whole school walks a course together and the teachers keep an eye out for kids smoking or jumping in the river and tries to make them run? It's fun actually and I don't mind it - it's a forced exercise of 4 kilometres in the wind and the sunshine and our local river is pretty nice, with it's beautiful gums trees and little jetties jutting out into the water. What I did really mind though was that at the end of the course, all 600 students were given a plastic bottle of water. Which, for the most part, was thrown over each other or discarded in recycling bins. Great, you'd think - at least they would be recycled.

But recyling is just not good enough.

As schools we're meant to educate for good habits. We're meant to raise kids with an awareness of their impact on the world. I wasn't the only one infuriated. Others also lamented that the school might use the word 'sustainability' on glossy brochures advertising how cutting edge it is, but didn't put it into practice (where is the renewable energy, for example?) and that by supplying those bottles, they were effectively saying it's okay to use them.

Never mind the fact that the school, and everyone else in this country, knows that:

• they might take between 400 and 1,000 years to decompose
• three times the amount of water is used in production than to actually fill it
• that it takes 17 million barrels of oil to produce plastic yearly (and people complain about cars being environmentally destructive whilst sipping their Mt Franklin)
• production in Australia meant 60,000 tons of greenhouses gases a year just in this country
• It takes 8 years to recoup the cost of a bottle of water by refilling the bottle with tap water

The email from the sports department in response to our concerns went a little something like this:

"We all agree that it feels wrong to have the plastic bottles at the end of the event. We have discussed this at length. The (local water company) truck has been investigated and there is not a reliable water source at the venue for them to use. Therefore there is concern over water quality. We would also require drinking vessels. With the start and finish at different points it is difficult to ask students to bring water bottles. They are heavy and once emptied, we do not trust the water supply at the river. Yesterday we found some students water bottles left behind which then poses the issue of lost property on mass. I have taken all plastic bottles and cardboard to the waste recycling venue this morning to ensure that they have been recycled."

So, this means essentially 'We care, but don't care, because we're not imaginative enough to find a solution and when we weigh this up with the possibility some kid might lose a water bottle, we're just going to keep giving plastic water bottles even though we know they are bad'

Swearing at the computer is a thing.

Yes, kids left water bottles behind - plastic ones. And if they left water bottles with their names on don't they just come back to the school with us, the responsible adults? And why is it difficult to ask students to bring their water bottles - they bring them EVERY SINGLE DAY TO SCHOOL because we've taught them it's important to stay hydrated. It's actually mandated that kids are allowed to bring a water bottle to class.

Sure, they are heavy to carry around the course, but we had a solution to that, too - they leave them in a box with their house leaders who are waiting for them at the end. Too easy. What on earth is inconvenient about that when we are basically fucking the entire planet with this stuff?

Because they don't all get recycled. Most of them end up in landfill. Only 1 in 5 get recycled. And if you, dear sports department, took them to the recycling centre, well done you - but haven't you just said it's okay to use water bottles to 600 students? We're meant to be setting good examples, surely.

It is not just 600 water bottles. It's the fact that according to this study done this year, 90 per cent of the world’s bottled water is contaminated with dangerous microplastics.

• bottled water samples can contain phthalates, mold, microbes, benzene, trihalomethanes, even arsenic. Tap water is likely safer, especially in developed countries like ours. Sure, we wouldn't drink the river water and I'm not sure any student in their right mind would do so.
• Plastic bottles contain chemicals that release when exposed to heat, including endocrine disruptors.
• Chemicals in plastic bottles are known to be linked with certain cancers.

Microplastics end up in the worlds oceans, and even in the salt we consume and the fish we eat. A single 1L bottle could disintegrate into fragments tiny enough to put on every single mile of beach in the entire world.

And the whale that was found with no less than 80 plastic bags found in it's stomach? I wish I could slap the Coles customers who were complaining about the inconvenience of the supermarket's ban of single use plastic bags which actually led the chain to renege on this initiative and give the customer what they wanted. Thankfully, they're still sticking to their guns and using biodegradable plastics and phasing these out too by the end of the month, but seriously? How hard is it to bring your own bags to the supermarket, or use one of their cardboard boxes? It does fill me with anger, and it's why I think this is my third post on Steemit ranting about plastics.

Next time you're complaining about how inconvenient it is, how about you think about this:

In the summer of July 2013, a sperm whale was stranded on Tershelling, a Northern island in the Netherlands. The whale had swallowed 56 different plastic items that totalled over 37 pounds. In April 2010 a gray whale died after stranding itself on a West Seattle beach; it was found to have over 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, plastic pieces, duct tape, and more in its system. And in March of 2013, a dead sperm whale washed up on Spain’s South coast which had swallowed 17kg of plastic waste.

The list goes on and on. Keep in mind, these are only the whales who choose to beach themselves or have washed up on shore; there are surely countless other whales and marine animals suffering the same fate, unbeknownst to us.

Unfortunately, these beachings are not uncommon events. In 1989 a stranded sperm whale in the Lavezzi Islands died of a stomach obstruction after accidentally ingesting plastic bags and 100 feet of plastic sheeting. A paper published in 1990 reports that a sperm whale in Iceland died due to a complete obstruction of the gut with plastic marine debris. In August 2008, a sperm whale washed up dead on the beach near Point Reyes, California, with 450 pounds of fishing net, plastic bags, and rope in its stomach (see picture to the left). In 2008, the California Marine Mammal Stranding Database recorded another sperm whale with enormous amounts of plastic and fish netting in its stomach.

• From Collective Evolution

But who cares, right? It's just one plastic water bottle. It's just a few plastic bags. And they are so darn convenient.

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