Reflection Week 4
The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes a seedbed for collective selfishness. When people are self-centered and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs.
Therefore, our concern cannot be limited to the threat of extreme weather events but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumeristic lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only move to violence and mutual destruction. A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic or social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. They prove successful in changing the ways in which businesses operate, forcing them to consider their environmental footprint and their patterns of production. Then, when social pressure affects their earnings, businesses clearly have to find ways to produce differently. This shows us the great need for a sense of social responsibility on the part of consumers. Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, a firm resolve to achieve sustainability, and a quickening of the struggle on the part of consumers. Today, in a word, the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle. The Earth Charter asks us to leave behind a period of self-destruction and make a new start. - Laudato Si’ #204-207
From article “No Time to Waste” – Institute of International Developmental Studies
This article describes the environmental destruction, sickness, mortality, and damage to livelihoods that the plastic pollution crisis is causing – namely the huge recent increase in the production and distribution of single-use plastics and its expansion across the globe to countries lacking the capacity to collect, manage and recycle waste. Current trajectories point to increased illness and unnecessary deaths, further harm to livelihoods, and greater destruction of our environment. The case is made that IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
There are four groups that have the key to tackling the plastic pollution crisis:
1. multinational consumer goods companies who drive the production of single-use plastics and currently do little to collect and sustainably manage the waste they have created
2. governments in developed countries who have enabled and encouraged a ‘throwaway’ culture and whose response to the crisis in developing countries has been weak
3. developing country governments whose citizens are the most severely impacted by the crisis
4. CITIZENS WHO CAN SHOW THAT THERE IS AN OVERWHELMING DEMAND FOR CHANGE.
Please see information from Beyond Plastics
Let us, as members of the SNDdeN Dorothy Stang Initiative, join together during Plastic Free July in our consciousness and prayer regarding the crisis of plastic pollution.
“We have to learn to have the necessary things of life and not ask ourselves what do I want, but what do I need.” - Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN