Plastic Progress
[July 29, 2004 1:05 AM ]

I write this as I have just returned from the Cape Tribulation area of far north Queensland. It is the first time I've returned to this area in 15 years, and there has been so much change as you would expect from such a popular "natural" tourism centre, in the Daintree world heritage area.

A poster displayed in shops and campgrounds near the area speaks of a whale that was washed up on the beach nearby. The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) newsletter details the story...

"A team of 15 QPWS staff battled thigh-deep in mud to save a female Bryde's whale stranded on a mudbank off Cairns on 25 August, but the whale died before it could be returned to open water.

To the rangers' dismay, a necropsy revealed that the eight-metre, 3.5 tonne whale had swallowed about 25 plastic items including bait and shopping bags, lengths of plastic sheeting and woven fertiliser bags.

Senior Conservation Officer Mike Short said the whale's death was triggered by the large, accumulated ball of plastic litter, which had severely restricted the animal's digestion.

Bryde's whale is a plankton-feeding species of the open ocean and does not normally venture close to shore." — News from the EPA and QPWS, Issue 4, October 2000.

The whale story has become a kind of environmental cause célèbre for the perils of plastic consumerism.

This is the price of "progress" — the debt we are accumulating that cannot be repaid.

I have visited many beautiful and remote beach areas in Australia, but I have never experienced any beach without a vast collection of plastic debris that has been washed in by the tide. Once on an remote beach, many kilometres from any form of civilization I found several large plastic containers, about 70cm in diameter, filled with palm oil, and a number of plastic bags from an American supermarket chain (including a receipt dated 1992).

A friend once told me of a baby's pram he found washed up one morning by the tide on a beach in France.

Modern consumerism enforces the idea of attractive display, seducing us with the myth of convenience and longevity for all 'consumer' products. Desire (temporary) ends in satisfaction, but this desire comes at a huge cost. A cost that we are largely oblivious to, or simply too busy buying to care about.

The Bryde's whale died with no food in her stomach, only plastic.

[created: October 11, 2001 5:00 PM, last modified: July 29, 2004 1:05 AM]