There's a divisive issue going on in Loburn and it's all to do with the dumping of seemingly toxic and waste materials that no-one wants in their backyard, several kms down the road from our home. Lorries will pass by the front door, doing the jobs that commercial transport needs to do, that people enjoying a tranquil environment would rather just disappear. Those trucks are part of the busyness of life doing a multitude of jobs including transporting foods, milk, fuel, new home materials etc - all the things that I rather appreciate as part of my daily life and I'm sure most others do too. Part of the privilege of living in this environment, rather than a suburb of town, is that those things are more noticeable. I've had to kick myself up the butt and remind myself of that reality.
Of course there are days when I wonder what it would have been like to have lived in this beautiful environment 100 years ago. But I don't live then, I live now and it's my responsibility to live in the world the best way I can, ask lots of questions and create something worthwhile with my life. If I was clever enough and more inventive I would love to come up with alternatives to some of these issues so that life could be improved for everyone and the natural environment.
Back to that Quarry dump... at first I was wholeheartedly caught in the division, of course on the side of the "good guys" being the environmental heroes, making our stand to save the water and soil.
Then I stopped myself. Were we really the good guys, was the issue really that black and white? Or were there many shades of grey that needed to be recognised?
Absolutely.
New Zealand is anything but "clean and green."
Toxic substances are used here that have been banned in most other places in the world. Indiscriminate chemicals are dropped from the sky to kill invasive pests...and everything else that is unfortunate enough to come into contact with it.
Councils, farmers and householders merrily spray their nuisance "weeds" with Monsanto-Bayer's Roundup, with seemingly no thought to the ramifications on health this water soluble chemical leaves. After all, a neat and tidy garden that can be quickly controlled and presents a perfect front (lest we be judged and criticised by neighbours for 'laziness') is the most important factor. A quick check on lawsuit information says that as of 1st October 2024 Monsanto had made nearly 100.000 settlement agreements to the tune of $11 billion dollars. I wonder why?
Many people with land here dig large holes and dump everything into them, general rubbish, dead animals, containers that had dangerous substances in - burying their problems with machinery and pretending they're not a part of the toxic land and water issue. Of course people are trying to save time and money and keep the surface of their environment clean, good in one way, really, really devastating in another.
We want all the privileges of life and none of the consequences.
It's like big skeletons in the closet no-one wants to admit are there.
To be fair, much of the time, we don't know what we don't know. Then we discover things, feel guilty and try to change our ways - or not! I discovered batteries are really bad to just throw in the household rubbish. I don't know how many I've neglected to dispose of correctly. Now I've got to form a new habit. And while somebody might be pointing at me right now saying what an idiot, "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones", we're all unaware, unconscious in all different ways...and then eventually we're not, we "wake up".
Then change is needed...no-one said it's easy...let's support one another, try not to beat ourselves up or other people, recognise we're all part of the problems of life, in big and little ways - but equally we're all part of the solution too.
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