Earth Day: Sharing a Thought
25.04.2023
For nearly a decade, people are avoiding the use of plastics in Mauritius. In business, we have seen how quickly paper and bamboo-based products are replacing plastics. While it is a good practice to shift from plastics to renewable resources, we need to question the underlying philosophy behind the mode of production.
Cultivating hectares of trees for pulp production neither contributes to slowing climate deregulation nor to driving humanity away from its destiny of extinction under the capitalist mode of production. In this time of multiple crises, it would have been common sense to use land and grow food for the community by the community.
The answer to the question of whether we as consumers should prioritise paper-based and bamboo-based products over plastics lies in the concept of usefulness. In the long run, a plastic bowl may have a lower environmental footprint than one made from renewable resources. Miko, the local ice cream maker, for example, has switched from plastic to paper containers. How many of us have not saved our plastic Miko containers for later use? This analysis surely would have been different if we were to buy products with a plastic packaging that would immediately land in bins or the open environment after use.
There was a time when corporates were so in love with Tupperware plastics that they could not stop bombarding us with all sorts of advertisements to activate their fondness for plastics in our hearts too. Just as slave colonies became economically unviable and the former colonisers had to call for abolition, plastics suffer the same fate.
The question is how do we dance to this tune? Our choices to opt for what we believe is right does not necessarily stem from our own political consciousness, but rather from the needs of corporates to sustain their interests.
The danger for us consumers to act unconsciously or emotionally is our contribution to stabilising the status quo and thus the ruling class domination via consent.
The aim of this short article is not to forge perceptions, but rather to open online discussions on the health of the planet, sovereignty of communities and corporate interests.
Dragonfly,
For Lavwa Koltar
