When our family set out for a year of traveling, autumn 2018, we hoped to explore the world and learn more about its nature and cultures,
but what met us was a huge garbage bin.
As parents it’s our duty to preserve the planet for future generations. Yet, as so many families traveling, we pollute the world more than we want to realize. Diapers, bottles, straws, takeaway coffees and food, plastic bags and multilayered sachets, all these modern single use plastics making our life so comfortable.
We might not notice the Single Use Plastic Pollution in the West, it’s neatly taken away from our sight ( often as far as poor countries in Southeast Asia ) , but we can’t fail to notice it while traveling the world.
The mismanaged waste in third world countries ends up in nature and fills our oceans so fast that even my own children are no longer able to experience the ocean as I use to when I was a child.
Today they have been swimming with whale sharks amongst glittering sachets, they pulled out plastic bags right in front of feeding black Ray mantas , they have seen monkeys with bags over their heads, turtles with fishing lines around their legs, birds and chickens feeding on plastic garbage, and they have taken out more plastic from nature islands than most people would believe possible.
They are 3,5, and 7 years old.
What will the world look like in 10 years?
The problem is so huge, we feel small and overwhelmed; we just want to get back to the clean streets and forests back home, pretending it didn’t happen.
But the problem we are witnessing is not going to go away, it grows every year, and it concerns us all.
As travelers we have a duty to notice, act , and Influence.
Open your eyes and look deeper than the selfie.
Act by pointing your cameras down, talk about it in your google reviews.
Influence by signing petitions, explaining to locals, and refusing the Single Use Plastic anywhere you go.
Together we can make a big changes