My husband is a mad, keen surfer and has been since he was a young boy. He grew up right on the coast in New South Wales so surfing was one of his greatest past times. We got talking the other night, as we always do and a huge wave popped up in my Facebook feed and I showed him. We started discussing how there’s just about nothing in the world that could stop the force of a huge wave, not even a sea creature. You’d just have to ride it out, pretty much like the surfer is doing in the above photo. It just got me thinking about how powerful nature is and what we, as humans, are doing to it.

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I’m in no way a ‘greenie’ but I do try to do my bit to avoid buying goods packaged in plastic but I know I could do more. The law of nature is the most powerful thing on this planet. It will dictate the outcome of a nuclear war. It will start to show us what happens when we manufacture too many artificial substances that can’t be broken down and endanger species, and human life. Nature will let us know when we upset the balance in greenhouse gas emissions and when subsequent black holes in the ozone layer emerge. Mother Nature will always have the last word. And when it does, we’ll be all twiddling our thumbs wondering how it ever got to be like this.

I hope I don’t see it in my time nor my children’s time, but one day Mother Nature will decide she’s had enough. What are we doing to the place we live in? Are our lives that empty that we have to fill our homes with inanimate objects or the latest cheap homewares just because they’re cheap? Do we really need that many clothes, shoes, handbags etc made in factories that have no thought for the environment, or human condition for that matter? Do we need to put everything we buy in plastic bags just for convenience without any regard for the damage we’re doing to the planet? 

I can remember when I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s this is all we had to collect our rubbish. Mum usually put the vegie scraps in the compost, there was very little packaging to dispose of and cardboard was usually recycled into some container to store something or be used for craft projects. 

Now we’re buying these plastic storage tubs to store stuff we don’t need or because it was a bargain or because our house is just about busting at the seems with too much stuff. My Mum didn’t own any of these as long as she was alive. Everything in her house was used or stored in a cupboard. It was just enough. My grandmother was even better at not bringing unwanted ‘things’ into her house and making do with just about everything. Nothing was ever wasted. I’m sure there were many other people of that generation who were like that but where did it go wrong? Companies trying to make too much profit all with no thought for the land we live in. It’s such a damn shame.

All I’m suggesting here is to take a hard long at things you buy and ask yourself do you really need it? This ‘stuff’ is being manufactured at a rate of knots and the shelves are being emptied by consumers who are so easy influenced by well styled photos and the thought that this is going to make their home look all that nicer when in fact all you’re doing is harming the very planet you live on. 

The Story of Stuff, the Original

I first saw this video clip 9 years ago and it really hit home. If you’ve got a spare 20 minutes, you need to watch it.

Stop buying bottled water.

Say ‘no’ to plastic bags.

Recycle, reuse, make do with what you already have. 

Think twice before you buy something. Do you really need it?

Let’s take action. We’ve only got one planet Earth. It can only take so much before it decides to say ‘enough’s enough’. Please give a thought to Mother Nature and the planet you live on before it’s too late.