Clean Up the World

It is a sunny September morning and the wind has finally dropped in the perpetually breezy Southern Spanish town of Tarifa. I live in the most southern point of mainland Europe, a paradise of long white beaches, migratory wetlands and lush mountains of pine and cork oak.

The lack of breeze is making it easy for me to rummage through the grass verge picking up stray, wind-blown plastic, discarded food wrappers and old, forgotten tissues. Around me, five or six other people are picking through the bushes, gathering junk.

Earlier in the day I met with a bunch of passionate, solution focused people, as we collected rolls of black sacks, rubber gloves and hand-painted signs and were allocated areas around the town to clean. This action is part of the Clean Up the World campaign, a worldwide movement aimed at collective responsibility for the mess we are making on our planet.

A number of things are running through my mind as I work… love for the environment, satisfaction at being of service, a warmth that I am taking responsibility for something and a sense of community and connection, not just with the people I am working with, but with nature herself.

As I pick up the flotsam and jetsam of our modern life, I can feel nature within me, around me, as an extension of the planet. I wonder how much of humanity has some kind of disconnect going on in their heads. There seems to be a correlation between the separation and isolation we feel and the amount of rubbish and packaging we are using on the planet. The further we get from nature and each other, stuck in our heads and egos, the more separate we feel thus the more useless stuff we tend to buy in order to fill that void. Packaging separates us from our food, from materials, from nature itself. Yet humans are nature. Nature is us. We are part of a vast ecology that is begging for us to wake up and realise this simple fact. In our separation from who we really are, we lose our way, senselessly consuming without regard for the results.

It is plainly apparent that the biggest amount of junk is plastic. My local supermarket advises using a disposable plastic glove to pick fruits from the display to put them in a plastic bag which will go in another plastic bag at the checkout if I were to follow all the ‘rules’. This is wholly a modern problem yet all of us are complicit in the continuation of such materials because we have not yet chosen to stand our ground when it comes to shopping and many of us are not aware of the alternatives. Plastics can very easily be made out of super sustainable hemp, creating super bio-degradable packaging that makes good compost! Yet that is only half the issue really.

Having good alternatives to plastic, having good rubbish solutions and recycling systems are not nearly as effective as not creating it in the first place and this is always our first port of call. We have the choice to shop more carefully, take our own bags, to consider what we are buying. Is there a less-resource hungry product out there? We can drop our awareness into our hearts as we shop, connect with our nature, and ask ourselves what good choices we can make today. We can decide to buy loose vegetables, take our own bags shopping and buy food from counters rather than pre-packed fridges. We can refuse packaging and extra bags. Clean Up the World makes it perfectly clear that we can go out anytime to pick up rubbish. It doesn’t just have to be their once a year weekend.

One thing I didn’t feel over the course of the day was anger. I didn’t blame anyone for the mess. Clean Up the World emphasises that we are all in this together. That means letting go of separation and blame. What occurs is a sense of community, responsibility, heart-connection and oneness with the planet. It feels good picking up rubbish. I highly recommend it.

Top Tips for Cleaning Up the World

1. Take a plastic bag with you when you go walking. You can pick up any litter you see. 
2. Go out into nature, breathe deeply, connect your breath to all that is around.
3. Let go of anger. We are in this together. This is our rubbish. 
4. Picking up rubbish is a grand opportunity to do something that feels good today!
5. Say no to unnecessary packaging and plastic bags.
6. Take your own bags shopping.
7. Shop in places that you can choose loose or refillable produce and packaging.
8. Investigate and educate yourself about hemp plastics.
9. Organise a Clean Up the World group to clean an area near you.
10. Communicate with your local council about your clean-up day.