Plastic Garbage

I was just washing the carrier/car seat for a new baby in the family.
Scrubbing.
Plastic.
Of course, the car seat is made entirely out of it.
I was thinking about how convenient it was, how it cleans nicely and drains and dries quickly.

I thought about a wonderful cetacean that died in Norway because his stomach filled up with non-digestible plastic bags to the point he couldn't eat anything anymore.

Actual content of the whale's stomach. A more gory picture in a link provided above

Then I remembered my husbands' camera bag, made out of recycled plastic fibre.
It's made from "garbage", but it's really aesthetically pleasing as far as camera bags go. And although he bought it almost a decade ago, it is still in amazing shape. Nothing wrong with it. Endurance is one of plastics' prime virtues. The same virtue makes it almost non-degradable, destined to linger in our biosphere for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

I remember that the bag made from "trash" was actually more expensive than a bag from "fresh", virgin material.

I remembered reading about Adidas making this ultra modern shoe from ocean plastic, like the bags that killed the Norway whale, and probably hundreds of thousands other sea creatures a year. Adidas hopes to make a million pairs of these, and also hopes to abandon virgin material in production altogether eventually.

It's a wonderful idea really, to use the ocean pollution as a material. The amount of waste plastic present on sea and land - we globally produce cca. +-275 MILLION metrics tons a year, of which up to 12 million end up in oceans - would probably sustain the industry for years.

But WHY do they cost the harsh 220$ a pair?

Alright, I figure you could say that it's so cheap to order crude new polymers.
That there's a lot of work in cleaning and sorting the ocean garbage.
That recycling itself with it's procedure and losses has a cost too.

BUT.

Not a long while ago we payed for two large mackerel fishes - all cleaned and prepared and roasted - for one euro.
These mackerels also came from a sea far, far away.
They where "harvested" (w/ plastic nets), separated, sorted, cleaned, disemboweled, traded, frozen; transported by ships and by trucks; bought by a supplier company, packed (in a plastic bag); then they where thawed, spiced up, grilled and packed (in plastic foil) and sold to us. For one euro. And our local store is not even nearly the most budget-friendly. It could go even cheaper.

I'm aware that it's a bit forced to compare a price of a "product" created by nature and that of a product created by industry and it's technology. But considering devastating effects of it's manufacturing on our health and environment, the cheapness of crude plastics is a really bizarre occurrence anyway. And recycled... Well that's another story. Or not?

It is really hard for me to believe that it is right (as in "correct" and as in "moral") for this superstar recycled running shoe to be, not two or three, but ten times more expensive than it's crude cousins.

A part of me is thrilled that this is being done, that any amount of plastic garbage is being pulled out of the ocean and used instead of crude polymers.

On the other hand, making environmentally-friendly products elitist doesn't make any sense and it's damaging for the cause in the long run. As long as corporations are making extra (extra-extra) cash on "green" branding, I don't see them on our side.

You and I can't do D.I.Y recycling though. Recycling is a big game, and big games are the industry's games. They are monsters of profit, and that includes cashing in on our poor planet's horrible state.

We mortals have the other two Rs left:
Reduce (that is, don't use).
Reuse.
Any time you can.
Remember, it lasts almost forever!

Introduction: Why so blue?

Polar bear and the melting Arctic ice, Telegraph

I'm starting this blog as a form of therapy, since I found out that I'm not alone in my problem of green thinking turning black in the perspective of global climate and environmental change

I live in Belgrade, Serbia, southeastern Europe. By training I'm an environmental impact analyst. I have work background in science education, animal protection and journalism, though currently I'm not actively working (except 24/7 as SAHM, cough). Also, I've been running this little environmental blog, Zeleno Majmunče ("Green Monkey"), for six years or so.

I've felt increasingly depressed and anxious about issues we face on our planet, and the future we face, to the point it had started to mess with my daily functioning.

Knowing that I'm a fragile person, somehow I've managed to keep climate topics as sort of a blind spot in my repertoire of interests for years and focused mostly on direct conservation issues. There is no conversation about conservation without climate change of course. I accepted it as a fact, but somehow rough and distant, and what's distant also seems sort of unreal. Of course I dreaded droughts and freaky weather and West Nile fever carrying mosquitoes and noted (real or imaginary) changes in city vegetation all the time. It just hadn't hit me hard, it hadn't been a chronic obsession. There were phases that went on for a few weeks, but not actually working in my field gave me a luxury to just shut down all the environmental resources I was following whenever I felt I was burning out.

A real game changer were four things: one, my husband getting increasingly interested in environmental topics, esp. climate change, and him discovering amazing people like Stefan Rahmstorf and George Monbiot. Suddenly, environment and climate became a daily topic of our conversation - suddenly, there was no unfollow button anymore; two, things getting politically, ecologically and economically grimmer and grimmer in Serbia, due to our unusually US Republican-like, wannabe-totalitarian government; three, having a new baby and all the natural anxiety that comes along with being responsible for a sweet and completely helpless living creature, in the social atmosphere described above under no. 2; four, Trump getting elected as a, ahem, "president of the free world". After that frail win that Paris conference was...

So shortly after US election, which were obviously a final straw, I started having nightmares about plants dying, rivers flooding, and Nazis still residing somewhere in the Earth's core. I started having mini-panic attacks at random moments throughout the day when my apocalyptic thoughts would overwhelm me. All the data vividly presented to me by reliable sources weren't really helping, as you might imagine. I would catch myself trying to connect the scientific prophecy of climate catastrophe with the prophecy of Revelations. All this, with having small children in your care, is a problem.

And of course, I blamed it on myself, and had perceived this as exclusively personal weakness of mine. I was telling myself that I was too tired and too sleepless. That it was the hormones. That the media was driving me crazy. That my hb, being online whole day because of work, was keeping me unnaturally updated. That I'm by nature and by nurture, prone to panic and different kinds of psycho-crisis.

Neven's beautiful new home

Couple of days ago, I read a Washington Post article about Neven Curlin, owner of a fairly popular blog about Arctic (and it's demise). "He created a beloved blog about the melting Arctic. But it got harder and harder to write". After years of monitoring the situation and publishing interesting data, creating a whole community around it in the process, he announced he was taking a break because, well basically - he burned out. He would shift his focus on practice instead - eco-friendly living in his new passive house. Exactly what I've been fantasizing about these days. Off the grid, underground.


Neven's case made think for the first time that I might not be alone in my weakness. Or that it's not a weakness, a fault, at all. That it might be a normal response of every conscious person.

And what does one do at this day and age when one has a problem? Google it, of course.

So last night, I poured my troubles into the search bar. Something along the lines of "environmentalist depression", and I ran across these three (great) articles: two at Grist (links: 1, 2), and one at Psychology Tomorrow (3)

"For your everyday environmentalist, the emotional stress suffered by a rapidly changing Earth can result in some pretty substantial anxieties." (1)

“I don’t know of a single scientist that’s not having an emotional reaction to what is being lost,” (1)

"Lise Van Susteren, a forensic psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. calls this emotional reaction “pre-traumatic stress disorder,” a term she coined to describe the mental anguish that results from preparing for the worst, before it actually happens. “It’s an intense preoccupation with thoughts we cannot get out of our minds,” Van Susteren says."

"...a more general kind of suffering, the suffering that comes from trying to fight climate change in the first place."(3)

"Being overwhelmed, of course, is also a difficulty for educators themselves. There is a growing scientific literature on “exhaustion syndrome,” or burnout, a problem that affects all of us, activists and caregivers in particular" (3)

"I did that because I believe that I and many other people around the world are suffering from “Climate Trauma.” It’s my own term. I am not a mental health professional, but I can identify plain as day the symptoms I recognize in myself and in my colleagues traumatized by our work to tackle climate change" (2)

So, there's my "diagnosis".
And of course, I can't compare with working scientist fighting in the front lines of this mess.
But I think anyone who had his blindfold taken off, anyone aware of human impact on our planet, anyone who knows beauty and frailty and complexity of Earth's systems, feels threatened to the point of anxiety disorder. A year ago when we were discussing deforestation and holiday season's massive attack on young trees all over our country, a dear friend and colleague of mine said "I feel like living a parody life. No one cares about things that are important to me".

It is common, it's just not talked about. Why? I guess it's because of the taboo of bringing emotions into science and science-based communication. But then, that taboo backfires, besides alienating us from one another, as denialists portray us as lying, manipulative and insensitive villains scaring descent folks for our own sinister purposes. They're scared?? "You don't know the half of it", as Monbiot said in another context.

The doom is still there and my nightmares probably aren't going anywhere soon, but at least now I know that I am not insane. And I know that many of us are in this together.

Except for the "therapy" thing, I don't have any special ambitions for this blog (except maybe giving that free world a preview glimpse now and then how it's like to live under amazingly Trump-like government for four years now). It's like a message in a bottle, in the internet ocean. If you're worried about environment and our common home Earth - you are not alone. Talk about it. Share how you cope. It heals. It helps us continue our little fights. I'm already feeling more up to it.

P.S. And yes, I'm starting to apply these 16 tips for avoiding further climate trauma. So thankful to Grist for paying so much attention to this important topic and opening the field of climate change psychology to me!