Readers' blog: Open letter to industry: Sell us a supermarket sea change
A sperm whale found dead in a national park in Indonesia had nearly 6kg of plastic waste in his stomach — including 115 plastic cups; four plastic bottles; 25 plastic bags; two flip-flops; a nylon sack and more than 1,000 other plastic pieces.
The 9.5m whale was found in waters near Kapota Island, part of the Wakatobi National Park, south east of Sulawesi, the park said in a statement on Tuesday.
Anyone take a walk on your local beach lately? It is probably swimming in plastic, so to speak.
Does anyone care? What can we do?
Here’s a start: Would Musgraves (SuperValu, Centra), Gala, Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Marks & Spencer — and all, and any, others — help us out by reducing the number of goods which are now packaged in plastic?
Most of us don’t want our mushrooms, tomatoes, courgettes, apples, oranges, etc, wrapped in the stuff and ending up in the belly of a whale in Indonesia, or Ireland.
We want to feel the sand on our feet, not thousands of plastic fragments.
We don’t want to eat plastic for dinner, clean fish would be just fine.
We don’t want plastic, knives, forks, cups and lids.
We don’t want an ocean of plastic, we just want an ocean.
We don’t want plastic pellets; seashore pebbles will do fine.
Food for thought?
No thought needed, just action. Please.
We’ve also had a belly full of the stuff.
Dripsey
Co Cork
