Promoting poison

As the human race travels ever further away from its sustainable environmental roots, so, too, do a growing number of ‘interests’, be these governmental and certainly, otherwise. They rev up money-making machines designed to maximise profit from impending disasters and, like the dyed in the wool ‘sheeple’ so many concerned citizens are, they fall for the ploys hook, line and sinker.

Take the increasing trend of recycling plastic bottles, for example. As information blasting out from all directions tells us, these can be used to grow plants in, for building greenhouses, for constructing car parks, for making rafts and boats, for being used as traditional jharoos and a whole host of other items, and gullible, self-professed environmentalists set to work with vigour, strong in the belief that they are achieving something ‘environmentally friendly’ via the recycling of this toxic, oil-based material, which would, if they had any sense at all, not have been on their shopping list in the first place and whose chemical-based contents generally do their insides, along with the environment they profess to care for, far more harm than good.

The highly profitable organic food market, which is increasingly popular all over the world and very much so with the small section of the population who can afford to purchase ‘pure food’ here in Pakistan, is yet another victim, too. First and foremost and unlike in countries where organic rules and regulations are strictly applied, produce sold here as organic is, on the whole, nothing of the sort — acquiring and then maintaining organic certification takes at least five very long years, in which qualified, suitably registered ‘experts’ maintain strict observation and carry out random testing of the soil in which ‘organic’ crops are being cultivated, plus, they analyse the crops being marketed as organic because when the sun goes down and the bugs come up, who knows which grower sprays what!

Consumers, be these of the ‘environmentally-friendly’ type or not, like their ‘organic’ produce to look like it has just been picked and, quite ridiculously, given the circumstances, are prepared to pay through the nose for the fruits, vegetables and herbs, so tantalisingly displayed in poisonous polystyrene trays sealed inside toxic plastic bags which, let’s face it, makes absolutely no sense at all, even if the artfully arranged contents are organic at all.

Sure, the polystyrene trays, so avid recyclers spout, can be re-employed as seed trays and the plastic bags sent in for recycling to other environmentally and atmospherically destructive ‘things’; it goes without saying that someone, somewhere, is making some kind of profit all down the line.

Even the majority of those opting to grow their own organic produce at home where they can maintain a watchful eye on it, are, thanks to plastics profiteers, increasingly polluting the earth they good-naturedly try to save: plastic wheelbarrows, plastic watering cans, plastic tunnels, plastic plant labels, plastic this, plastic that and plastic plant pots to replace the environmentally-friendly clay ones, which are so climatically suitable, and the making of which gives year-round employment to countless traditional potters with no other viable source of income.

Plastic may be fashionable but it is not, by any measure of the imagination, an environmentally friendly tool.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2013.