The Earth needs our love more than ever!

Glenn Hywood has lived and worked in his sign business in around Bridgetown for around fiftteen years.

Glenn’s biggest concern is the amount of rubbish, particularly plastics, which are polluting our beautiful oceans and are now littered throughout our beautiful country side.

Glenn has been active with his concerns, gathering plastics from roadsides and different beaches around the south west. He explains how his activism against plastic pollution commenced, “I own a 113-acre bush block of what’s left of the natural world in a little town called Northcliffe. It’s only a short 15-minute drive from my block to a spectacular coastline surround the D’entrecasteaux National Park.

“I celebrated my 50th birthday last year in August and thought I would have an ‘Earth Day’, so I headed to the coast with a few bags to collect what the ocean had left as a message.

“At the time there had been a huge tide and a strong on-shore wind. It was the worst I had seen that beach. We collected what we could but we had to leave a lot behind as it was too small to retrieve. I was devastated. We have since collected from different beaches all along our remote coastline.

“Ever since that day, I have been on a war path to sound the alarm on the severity of what it means to live in a plastic polluted world. It seems every direction I turn, I am met with an overwhelming feeling that we may be too late to repair the damage that plastic has done to the natural world.

“When I returned home, I knew I had to take it further. I took the collections of plastic from different beaches, a collection from the roadside, some farming plastic and photocopied images of nature in trouble to Parliament House of Western Australia and stood on the grounds nervously waiting to be told off and told to move along, only to discover we are all entitled to raise awareness if it goes through the right avenues.

“I have been there four times now and have begun to make some interesting connections with the gardeners and the police, along with other really nice humans interested in my cause who see the urgency behind my reasons for sitting in front of Parliament for hours on end.

“The world is one ocean. Whatever happens here or over on the other side of the globe connects us all. The Earth’s Ocean is polluted by our plastic, and plastic is forever.

“I have sent emails to the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, environmental ministers, Dr Karl, environmental scientists, the Pope, the Dalai Lama and even a handwritten letter to the President of the People’s Republic of China - all written from a human desperate to connect with a voice bigger than mine that could sound the alarm.”

Glenn concludes with, “So many livelihoods today all rely heavily on plastic. Plastic is a synthetic, inorganic, unnatural product never before seen on Earth. Once it has finished its purpose and is discarded, the plastic waste goes on to pollute the natural world.

“Hopefully you may start to see why I feel such an urgency as to why we have to act now, before we leave it too late. Especially for the next generations innocent to a world they have been born into and needing to make sense of the mess they will have to deal with.”

On Saturday 8th July, Glenn along with Transition Bridgetown, held a display at the community stall in Bridgetown, displaying some of the discarded plastic Glenn had collected from around the district to raise awareness of the long-term impact that plastic packaging and plastic products are having on the environment.

The display was to encourage and engage in discussion with the general public about what they perceive happens with plastic waste and to discuss possible ways to avoid unnecessary plastic packaging and to reinforce the message that plastic is forever; every piece of plastic, soft or hard plastics, is not biodegradable or environmentally friendly.

From the editor; Plastic is forever as Glenn states and as plastic pollution breaks down it has now started entering our food chain as small particles.

As human being we have always wanted a better life and a better world for the next generation, but we are racing towards leaving the planet in a worse state than ever for the next generations.

There are some changes we can all make in our everyday life to limit the plastic pollution of rubbish we now see in our oceans and country side.

Like all human endeavours, they all start with small steps.

Reuse and repurpose as many everyday items as you can.

You can choose to buy food sold in carboard, paper, metal or glass, rather than those that come in plastic containers.

You could make an effort to take your own coffee cup to a café for your morning coffee.

With the recent changes, shop owners have seen the banning of plastic carry bags and single use drinking straws. These are small changes but are helping to make a difference.

Glenn concludes with “Everything about the urgency for what I do comes from seeing the images of nature in trouble and dying from a death we have created. They are the ones currently impacted as they graze the Earth when they feed on the planet. In the ocean or on land they are navigating one hell of a plastic mine field just to survive.

“Everything I have been doing, is trying to be a voice for the natural world. Animals innocent to what we have inflicted onto their once pure world, aren’t able to type an email or stand on the street corner and shout. “STOP POLLUTING OUR PLANET!

“Nature is in a huge amount of trouble. WE are part of nature.

“We all have to start and acknowledge our existence on Earth is thanks to the natural world.

We have to see it. That bit of plastic lying next to the gutter is heading towards the mouth of an animal at some point in time. Especially knowing how long plastic will be haunting the natural world from here on.”