Happy Earth Day! April 22, 2016

(This was a post from April 22)
I hope that today will bring awareness to millions more about our impact on Mother Earth - our oceans, forests and wildlife especially.
What if we all made a resolution to say we will use less, recycle everything we ever touch.

Below are pics from Bonaire's Lac Cai area from last week - the week before it was all clean, but the ocean regurgitated all of this in just a matter of days...

Did you ever think about what happened to the toothbrushes we throw out into the garbage? I found one of them on the shores of Bonaire. Washed up from the ocean.

The regular toothbrushes we use are difficult to recycle, because they are mostly made out of a mix of plastics. They don't biodegrade either. I'm sure that you've also heard that you need to get a new toothbrush at least every 6 months, recommended is every 3 months. So let's say we go for 2 toothbrushes per person per year. Average human life expectancy at 70? Ok not everybody brushes their teeth to the last day and starting the day they are born, so let's pull that back to 60 years of brushing. That's 120 of them per person. Times that with say just a third of the world population.... That's over 100billion in 60 years. Billions. Just toothbrushes. Imagine things we use multiple of per day per person? Straws. Cups. Lids. All things that we can actually do without.

A whole bunch of plastics... sitting on the shore of Bonaire. Things that the ocean threw up onto the next shore, in need of help. We can turn our backs... or we can pick them up.
Think about it? If each one of us picked up just the stuff we saw on the beaches... rather than burying them in the sand we'd have such an improvement!
Just organizing Beach cleanups a couple of times a year makes such a big difference.

Who knows? This probably held some really ripe, delicious and juicy strawberries that the earth gave us. So we can thank her by throwing this plastic container we didn't need in the first place into the ocean. 

The strawberries or goods this was carrying could have easily been packed into a small little paper bag... 

Somebody somewhere ate something. A soup? With some great lentils, tomatoes or other delicious, nutritious vegetable the earth gave us? 

So we can  give her back a plastic spoon to keep forever, poisoning birds and fish as it disintegrates into thousands of small pieces. 

I thought this one was fitting in the reefs of Bonaire. He's coming back! He will resurrect. And now Darth Vader lives in the reefs...  to fight the evil we are doing. The force be with you beautiful ocean! :)