“Wenn ich wüsste, dass morgen die Welt unterginge, würde ich heute noch mein Apfelbäumchen pflanzen”
“If I knew, that the world ended tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today”
-Martin Luther
We all know that Planet Earth’s Oceans are stressed in this day and age. There is so much plastic trash in the oceans that some of it has even gotten its own name, as if it was a country (The Great Pacific Garbage Patch). For anyone following environmental news, the situation looks pretty dire. But, in accord with Luther’s famous words, this is not a reason to give up.
Hence we did a beach clean-up at Salaya. We took some of our staff, some old rice-sacks, gloves and walked along the beach, both north and south of the resort, and picked up all the trash we could find. The beaches in Dauin are still very clean by comparison with a lot of other locations. But, we still made them a bit cleaner.
We found plastic wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic bags, cigarette butts and a few glass bottles. All of that we then sent to the proper garbage disposal provided by the municipality.
Besides making the beach cleaner, we hope that our efforts raised a bit of awareness and that our fellow citizens of Planet Earth will be a bit more hesitant when it comes to littering, and to using single-use plastic.
Not happy!
Coming back to Martin Luther, it seems that he never uttered his most famous quote, about the apple tree, which I cited at the beginning of this post (explained here, in German). Still, it’s a great quote. No, the world will not end tomorrow. Yes, let’s keep cleaning up our beaches, and let’s reduce the rubbish which ends up there in first place.