A giant whale made of plastic waste jumps out of a canal in Bruges, Belgium. In Japan, in the Uno ferry port, there are two huge fish made of the same plastic waste that washed up on the coast here from the sea, and in Lisbon, street artist Bordalo collects plastic waste until he has enough to create his works of art that are as high as the house wall.
These memorials of environmental protection can be found all over the world - and they can even be experienced interactively, for example in Lisbon when you are asked to throw the caps of PET bottles into the basin provided for this purpose. When we took the pictures, the water surface was already heavily covered with plastic and one wonders with concern where the caps would have landed otherwise...
Four decades ago, little thought was given to this and the plastic bag revolution is unfortunately continuing throughout Southeast Asia to this day.
Photo: An elderly woman searches a mountain of rubbish in Lombok, Indonesia in 1986 for recyclables.
Around two decades ago, the Environment Minister at the time, Jürgen Trittin, took energetic action against the wasteful use of aluminum cans and ... received scolding from almost all sides: The headlines in the media aimed at the process deficiencies of the "can deposit" and almost unanimously lost the goal of growing environmental awareness out of sight. It says, for example: "Jürgen Trittin outsmarted himself - the introduction of the uniform take-back system on October 1st turned out to be a complete failure." [Spiegel online, Michael Kröger 01.10.2003, 16:01].
Per aspera ad environmental awareness, shows the rough tone on this topic then and now.
It is currently being discussed whether the desperate people who call themselves "Last Generation" are criminals and the media are trying to grab attention with headlines such as: "Look what car Greta Thunberg is driving". That reminds me of another well-known Latin quote: Environmental awareness quo vadis?"
