I live close to the ocean, and every morning I go to the beach to watch the sunrise. And every morning I pick up trash from the sand. Some days I pick up a lot, other days just a little. Some days I go well prepared, with gloves, buckets, bags, and my trash picker. Other days I just bend down, collect items with my bare hands, and deposit them in the trash bins. But I have vowed not to leave the beach without picking up at least some items. Being a surfer, I have developed great love for the ocean, especially the shoreline, and beach cleanup is not new for me: it’s an activity I have been performing for decades. I have made it my mission to collect the scattered rubbish people leave behind. Almost every day I hear a “Thank you for doing this” from a stranger, and it is not uncommon for me to engage in conversations with passersby about how much our careless littering is wounding our planet.

In the past, I would be collecting trash and thinking, “How can people be like this? How can they be so inconsiderate?” I used to be very critical and judgmental, but I have changed. Nowadays, I try to do my beach cleanup mindfully, as a meditative exercise. When I catch myself judging and condemning others, I immediately stop, and redirect my attention to sensing the beauty that surrounds me: the sounds of the ocean, the colors of the clouds, the cool morning breeze, and the sun rising on the horizon. I bring to mind what a privilege it is to be alive, and I feel grateful for being able to notice, appreciate, savor, and absorb all the magic, mystery, and miracles around me.

Mental images of the tragic consequences of our selfish, mindless, and careless ways of living still come to visit me, and I cannot escape feeling momentarily discouraged and sad for our collective delusion. But I treat myself and my sadness kindly. And I keep cleaning, doing the little things that I can do to make our world a little bit better, without knowing if what I am doing will ever make a difference.

Almost every morning, I see people arrive at the beach and, to my disbelief, sit right in the middle of the trash. They act as if they don’t see it. They seem to accept a polluted beach as something normal—as the new normal, as the way things are now—and the litter does not seem to affect them. It is as if the trash became something so familiar that it became invisible to them. And since the beach is already dirty, why not continue to trash it, right? Apparently the despicable behavior of some individuals gives license to others to do the same.

During my early morning walks I also meet people who, just like me, come regularly. They walk by the same cigarette butts and pieces of plastic, carton, metal, and glass on the sand as I do, but very few of them pick any of those items up: it’s a rare occasion when this happens. They love the beach as much as I do, I am sure, but they seem to be completely oblivious to the trash left behind by others, and this indifference saddens me. I imagine they feel it is someone else’s responsibility, not theirs, to do the cleaning. I, on the other hand, believe it is everyone’s duty to take good care of our planet.

I recognize that I have not always been like this, but several decades ago I experienced an awakening in my life, and from that moment on I have been living by the motto, “Leave it better than you found it.”

I am not saying all this to brag, but to bring up a reflection about the ways we live. Perhaps we can pause and ask ourselves, “Am I aware of how my choices regarding what I buy, and how I dispose of what I no longer want, affect the planet and all life on it? When I go to public places and leave trash behind, can I reflect and see that I am being selfish and lazy? Can I see that I am only doing what is convenient for me without considering the inconvenience I create for others?” I ponder: Would smokers who leave their cigarette butts on the sand be happy having their children and grandchildren playing in giant ashtrays? Would anyone choose to take their children to landfills to play in the middle of the garbage? Certainly not! But, sadly, this is what our beaches are turning into: huge ashtrays and dumpsters!

The numbers are staggering and difficult to comprehend!

Earthday.org, an organization whose mission is to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide, and that works with more than 150,000 partners in over 192 countries to drive positive action for our planet, has compiled the following information about plastic production and pollution:

Plastic bags - Five trillion plastic bags are produced worldwide annually. That’s 160,000 every second! Americans throw away 100 billion bags annually, and it can take up to 1,000 years for a bag to disintegrate completely.

Plastic bottles - Humans use circa 580 billion plastic bottles every year. That’s about 1.6 billion plastic bottles per day. That’s roughly 1.2 million plastic bottles per minute, or 20,000 bottles every second.

Plastic cups - The world uses 500 billion plastic cups every year, almost 1.4 billion per day. In the U.S., we throw away more than 50 billion coffee cups every year, the majority of them with plastic lids.

Drinking straws and Styrofoam cups - Americans alone throw away 500 million drinking straws and 70 million Styrofoam coffee cups every day.  

Cigarette butts - Around the world, people litter more than 4.5 trillion cigarette butts every year.

At least 14 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year. And even when we dispose of the plastic correctly, it doesn’t simply disappear. Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form, with the exception of the small amount that has been incinerated. When plastics end up in landfills, they aren’t harmless. They break down into tiny toxic particles, the micro-plastics that contaminate the soil and waterways and enter the food chain.

We have to drastically reduce or, as soon as possible, stop producing and consuming plastic altogether. We need to migrate to a zero-waste world where we adopt the new behaviors: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot.

Perhaps reflections such as these can inspire us to live more mindfully, consuming less, wasting less, and being more prudent with the disposal of the garbage we create. Perhaps we can be more conscious of the choices we make, and limit to a minimum the amount of disposable items we use. I, for one, am trying to be more selective of what I buy, trying to buy less, reduce the consumption of products packaged in plastic and staying away from single-use plastic items, such as bags, forks, knives, spoons, plates, cups, straws, and bottles, items that I find on the beach every day.

In an article published in the May 6th, 2019 edition of the Washington Post, Darryl Fears wrote:

“One million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, with alarming implications for human survival, according to a United Nations report released Monday. The landmark report goes further than previous studies by directly linking the loss of species to human activity. It also shows how those losses are undermining food and water security, as well as human health. Oceana senior adviser Philip Chou called the report a beacon for more action to address a crisis. ‘We are seeing alarming increases in the deaths of fish, marine mammals and turtles ingesting plastics,’ Chou said. ‘These plastics break apart in the ocean into microscopic particles [that are] consumed by fish, fish we now eat.’”

I also have been distressed by the negative impact livestock production has on the environment. Livestock farming has a vast, detrimental environmental footprint. It is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and contamination by pesticides and herbicides. It contributes to air, land, and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain, ocean water warming, coral reef bleaching and degeneration, droughts, fires, and global warming. Considering all these factors, one of the most effective ways of repairing the environment is to refrain from consuming products of animal origin. James Cameron, the famous filmmaker, said,

“This may surprise you because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. It’s not a requirement to eat animals: we just choose to do it, so it becomes a moral choice and one that is having a huge impact on the planet, using up resources, and destroying the biosphere.”

But this is not all. We also need to be sensitive and reject the abhorrent ways we treat animals.  It is wrong to enslave, torture, and slaughter animals for our benefit. Animals were not made for us. They are sentient beings and we must have compassion and treat them kindly. Alice Walker said, “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” To sum it up, eating plants—like the majority of animals do—is good for us, good for the animals, and good for the planet.

Stephanie Steinberg, an environmental activist and a friend of mine, reminds me that we need the planet, but the planet doesn't need us. This is so true, isn’t it? The planet will still go on when we become extinct, just like it continued to go on, for example, when other species, such as the dinosaurs, died out. Unfortunately, not only are we the ones who are creating all the current ecological crises, but we are also the ones who are making them worse due to our neglectful and irresponsible way of living. Let’s take a look at the global population. The total number of humans currently living is around 8 billion. It took over 200,000 years of human history for the world’s population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years more to reach 8 billion.

I find it alarming to witness the state of delusion we are living in. Rather than focusing on repairing and preserving the Earth, we are now entertaining the idea of inhabiting other planets. In our delusion, perhaps we have already subconsciously accepted that it is acceptable to trash the Earth because we will always be able to leave this planet and go live somewhere else. Really? Where? And then what? Will we trash that planet and go to another one? Can’t we see how absurd all this is? 

We must change our paradigm and the ways we are living. We must leave behind the growth mindset and adopt a sustainability mindset. We must stop seeing our planet merely as a supply warehouse from which we get the resources we need for the production of the goods we want, and probably don’t really need. We must stop, ponder, and see that it is not right to treat our planet as a dumpster and a sewer for the garbage we generate. We must reduce consumerism and let go of this obsession with buying more and having more. It's time for us to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. It’s time for us to buy less which consequently will reduce production and limit the amount of waste we generate. We must move from this industrial society where success is measured by constant growth—GDP growth, corporate market share growth, profit growth, personal wealth growth—to a society where success is measured by its ability to sustain life.

Paul Veliyathil wrote,

“We should erase from our minds the mistaken notion that the Earth is an inanimate object and view it as an intense and intricate process. This vision of Earth as a living process will help us replace the unconscious notion that we are living on the Earth with the awareness that we are living with the Earth. In this context, changing something so simple as a preposition—on and with—can have a profound impact on how we experience, and manage life as earthlings. For example living on the Earth makes us users and abusers of the resources of the Earth, but living with the Earth can make us collaborators on a cosmic journey of hope. It is about recognizing the fact that our health and well-being are closely tied to the health and well-being of our home planet.”

The bottom line is that we need to take good care of our planet, the only one we have, and not treat it as if it were disposable because it is not!

Joanna Macy encourages us to ask ourselves, “Does the way I live my life support the changes I want to bring about?” The truth is that if we are not part of the solution—if we aren’t engaged in living more mindfully and repairing the damage that has already been done—then we are the problem.

The world needs people who see with clarity, are guided by wisdom, and act with selflessness and responsibility for the well-being of all. The practice of mindfulness meditation and mindful living organically brings about a new consciousness that makes us experience compassion for all sentient beings. With the realization that we are all on this journey together, we protect all life, without exception, being extremely careful in order not to harm any life form. We make conscious choices and oppose the enslavement, exploitation, and slaughtering of animals.

If we want to preserve Spaceship Earth, we must adopt much simpler and less violent ways of living.

In ‘Operation Ice: Melting the Heart of Man,’ a beautiful film by Drew Denny, the following impactful testimony and plea is featured. Greenlandic Inuit people have been living with the ice for thousands of years. In January of 1963, locals noticed glaciers melting during the winter. In 1975, a group of elders asked a man named Angaangaq to tell the world about the melting ice.

“I spoke about that at the United Nations in August of 1978.  That was the first time it was brought out by the native people that The Big Ice was melting. I began to be invited by organizations and events and ended up traveling for the United Nations all over the world. I am friends with many people now and we look forward to going to that city where the next meeting is going to be. I look forward to going to a restaurant and having a nice time. At the end I realized that I was just like everybody else. I wasn’t changing as I had been asked by my elders to change, and now it is too late to stop the melting of the ice. The idea is to change the people and I’ve failed in my work. So I decided I would quit that job and go home to Nuuk where my mother lived… My mother was sitting on my father’s chair. We took our hands together. She closed her eyes. She said, ‘Son, you just have to learn to melt the ice in the heart of man. Only by melting the ice in the heart of men will men have a chance to change.’ And I can still hear her saying that. I did not succeed because I’ve failed to change the leaders of the world. For the last forty years they have been trying to get to an agreement, and no matter what we do we cannot stop the melting of The Big Ice. We cannot. Politically they refuse to talk about it because it is too overwhelming and it would scare the people. But I’d rather scare the people and wake them up than let them die in ignorance. The only thing we can do now is to become the hope for the world in which we live. You, personally, can become the hope in the world you live in. So, my prayer is that one of you will awaken in the Spirit and become a guiding light for the people. The world in which we live needs hope. That’s the greatest need.”

You and I are being called to awaken and become guiding lights. Let’s accept the call and continue practicing so we may become the bringers of sanity our world so desperately needs. Let’s join Joanna Macy, and make her beautiful vows ours too:

“I vow to myself and to each of you to commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings; to live on Earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products, and energy I consume; to draw strength and guidance from the living Earth, the ancestors, the future generations, and my siblings of all species; to support others in their work for the world and to ask for help when I need it; and to pursue a daily spiritual practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart, and supports me in observing these vows.”

…

Piero Falci teaches Mindfulness Meditation and Mindful Living, leads Insight Meditation Silent Retreats, and organizes Silent Peace Walks. Piero is an educator who believes that the inner work that leads to personal awakening and transformation is indispensable to create a better world. He aspires to live a life that matters and hopes to inspire others to do the same. He is devoted to helping individuals have insights that may expand selflessness and compassion and lead to the growth of kindness and care for all sentient beings and the natural environment. He is a promoter of peace who believes in advancing the idea that Heaven is here if we want it to be. This essay is from his latest book A Better Life in a Better World: Can Mindfulness Save Us from Ourselves? For more information, visit www.PieroFalci.com