Letter: Please address our drastic waste problem!

Open letter to the Minister of Environment, Dr Molewa:
The problem of plastic waste such as plastic bottles which litter our waterways, land, beaches and ocean needs to be addressed.
Although we can have clean-up initiatives and programs to try address these problems, it is small fry in comparison to what can be done by government. Educate to raise awareness, introduce better waste management practices, introduce a packaging tax and another on manufacturers who use  hard-to-handle, environmentally unfriendly packaging. Introduce a deposit and refund system on all plastic and glass.
Waste management needs to improve drastically. Help people to love their environment through education and implementation of good practices such as in Australia. This means the 3Rs must be taught in schools and in communities and at a national level: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Different coloured bins and/or bags must be provided in towns and homes so that waste can be sorted at source. Our present system on the Dolphin Coast is one black plastic bag. This means everything is thrown into this bag and therefore most waste goes to landfill.
Baba Dioum from the ministry of Agriculture and Ecology from Senegal said “In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.”
Do you have dynamic anti-litter programmes/ videos which you take to communities and schools to teach the 3Rs? It seems some township dwellers don’t know what to do with their waste. It gets thrown wherever.
People should know that the piece of plastic they throw down can get into the sea and appear as a tasty jellyfish to a turtle. Or the bottle which is thrown down without its lid. The lid floats on the ocean and the albatross flies down and eats it. This means that people who do the right thing and clean up are heroes as they save lives.
Everyone’s actions are connected to an outcome. The butterfly effect. The whole connection to the earth and our relationship with her needs to be in people’s awareness. The tree of our lungs is connected to the trees of the earth.
I thought of approaching a university like Vega School, asking if they might consider a project using their dynamic young multimedia minds to create a catchy educational tool which could be taken to schools and communities to raise awareness. Would you help raise awareness by backing something like this. What about a TV advertisement? Do you have any outstanding posters which prompt people to do the right thing?
I think a short, powerful video and dynamic posters could go a long way in raising awareness. A picture is worth a thousand words so even a short film with no language but with a moving, background African beat ….
Products which have more packaging should have to pay a packaging tax. Manufacturers should pay a tax when they use packaging which is hard to control. For example, the sucker stick which used to be rolled up paper is now a plastic stick. These are everywhere. Children suck their lolly and then throw the stick down. Wouldn’t be a problem if it were a little bit of bamboo or some other organic material. Please can South Africa introduce these laws and initiatives to help tidy up our environment?
Introduce a law insisting that deposits be paid and refunded for all plastic bottles. The bulk of the problem, as pictured above, seems to be cooldrink bottles. If all drinks could be made 50c more to be used as a deposit, the problem would no longer exist. These bottles could then be recycled which would help the environment in many ways. To recycle is to use significantly less energy and therefore lessen greenhouse gas emissions too.
Several years ago, when I drove to Umfolozi, ugly plastic packets decorated the trees, fences and road verges but now that problem is no more. Thank you. Having to pay for plastic packets has done wonders for the environment. However, waterways carry the plastic bottles, depositing them in what should be pristine environments.
We are blessed to have the most beautiful environment to share with a diverse and wonderful range of flora and fauna. Let’s help Mother Earth, South Africa!
KAREN HULETT
Salt Rock