One Can Make a Difference (14 page)

When I got home to the UK, I happened to go snorkeling one day and I was horrified at what I saw. There was plastic bag after plastic bag on the ocean floor here too! I kept diving down, picking up bags, sticking them in my bikini, and then holding more of them. When I came out of the water, I looked like the monster of the deep with all these plastic bits hanging off me. Everyone walking past stared! That afternoon, I was in a queue and noticed that no matter how tiny a purchase someone was making, the cashier would say,“Carrier bag?” and they'd say, “Yes, please!”

When I showed the film to my friend Adam, who runs a deli in the village, he was quite shocked. He said, “I don't want to stock plastic bags any more.” Then another friend, Sue, who runs an art gallery, watched it. She was shocked as well. That's when I heard myself asking, “Could I show the film in your gallery?” When I saw her writing down a day, ten days away, in her gallery diary, I knew I had to get the job done: I wanted every trader in Modbury to see it and I wanted Modbury to be plastic bag free. There are forty-three shopkeepers in the village, and I got a list of all of them from the Chamber of Trade. I didn't pressure them. I simply went around, with a smile, saying, “Would you come and watch my film, please. There'll be wine and food. And I'm going to ask everyone to consider making Modbury the first town in Britain to be plastic bag free.”

The night of the showing, I gave the first talk of my life, offered the facts and figures, and showed my film. People were appalled, especially when they saw the albatrosses' plight. At the end, we had a discussion. The smaller merchants were worried about the supermarkets and I had to reassure them that the supermarkets would look very bad if the small shops changed and the supermarkets, who always talked about how “green” they were, didn't. No other town in Britain had gone plastic bag free, but I'd found a wonderful Australian group called Planet Ark Foundation whose founder had provided me with all the information I needed to help people make the switch. His magic words were, “It can be done!” So, I explained the alternatives, like cornstarch bags and organic cloth bags. Then I called for a show of hands. To my amazement, they all raised their hands! I was taken aback. “Within a month, that's our challenge!” I said.

So, that's how Modbury became the first town in the UK to be plastic bag free (though I'm happy to say other towns are now following suit). My friend Adam used to give out 200 plastic bags a day; in the first week, he sold four cornstarch bags. The big supermarket gave away 1,000 plastic bags a day; in the first week, they sold 250 cornstarch bags. People now bring their own bags to the shops and everyone wins, including the oceans and wildlife. If anyone wishes to do the same thing, and I hope they will, I have put all the instructions on my Web site.

Hawaiian culture is incredibly respectful of the natural environment, and penalties for despoiling nature and wildlife were written into native law.What the West has done to despoil these once-pristine islands by “importing” its plastic waste via the ocean currents is absolutely awful. Hawaiians have a wonderful ethos called “Kuleana,” which means that privilege—in this case, enjoyment of all that is beautiful in the natural world— comes with the responsibility—in this case of protecting it. To me, this term is something we should all work toward and try to achieve no matter where in the world we live.

ROBIN KEVAN (AKA ROB THE RUBBISH)

No Point in Grumbling!

Since his retirement a few years ago, Robin Kevan, a keen walker who loves
being outdoors, is thoroughly enjoying his new “hobby.” In fact, it not only gives
him something constructive to do with part of his day, it has changed the face
of the little Welsh town, Llanwrtyd Wells, where he lives with his wife Tina.
What is it? Well, Rob has developed a keen interest in . . . garbage! Picking
it up, that is. And he does it without a grumble. I relate to Rob, apart from the
grumbling bit, because every weekend when I am at home, you can find me
cleaning up after the construction workers who park their trucks along the road.
As I scoop up the umpteenth empty liquor bottle, I have to wonder how the
fourteen-story building they have erected doesn't wobble, for some of the workers
couldn't have been that steady on their feet by day's end. Rob is a mega-version
of me, someone who wants the world not only to be a beautiful place, but also to
be a beautiful place to look at. Starting in Wales, he has now been as far afield
as Mount Everest in pursuit of rubbish. The story of his litter-picker evolution
perfectly illustrates how helping clean up even one patch of ground around us
can make everyone's experience more enjoyable.

I
've always loved being outdoors. I've definitely got a “thing” about wild open spaces. Where I live now is one of the prettiest places on earth, a beautiful rural village, officially the smallest “town” in Britain, with hills all around me. It's very wet here, but that's what makes it so green, the air so crisp. You might call this town “sleepy,” but it's another story when people arrive here from all over the world for the “World Bog Snorkeling Championships!” Contestants put on a snorkel and have to swim underwater through a sixty-meter-long dark, cold, black, smelly peat bog pit, both ways, without surfacing. I've watched it many times.

I'm lucky in that where I was born and bred in the Yorkshire Dales, now called Cumbria, is one of Britain's great natural beauty spots, with an abundance of hills, rivers, and waterfalls. As a lad, I spent every free moment out in the fields, roaming wild and free. I loved to be out, particularly messing about along the riverbanks. Cities only appealed to me, the buzz of them, the bright lights, for a fleeting moment in my youth, but as I grew older I came to really appreciate the quiet and peace of the countryside. As an adult, I still walk a lot. Walking, especially walking up a mountain like Ben Nevis, Britain's tallest peak, makes me feel alive. I like the effort, I like to feel the wind and the rain hitting me; it touches my very soul. I think, “This is me! This is what I'm about.” Walking in beautiful places is uplifting, mystic in a way, and everything in nature is beautiful really, no matter how different one place is from another.

When you are leading a busy life you can be oblivious to some things, but when you retire, you can slow down and notice things around you. I noticed that even in my beautiful town, people drop their crisp [potato chip] packets on the ground and toss their empty bottles and cans into the hedges. I live about 300 yards up a very rural road from our lovely town center and there's always litter staring up at me from behind the parked cars on the street. I regularly moaned to my wife about the mess and how irritating it was and how it took away from the impact of our little town, and one day she said “Well, why don't you stop grumbling and do something about it?”

It took a lot for me to start because I found it embarrassing. Only tramps are seen picking up things off the ground, cigarette butts and the like. So I decided to go out at dawn, when no one was about and pick all the litter up on our street. That day the road looked so much better that I felt very good about it. That's how it started: I was the Magic Fairy who cleaned everything up on our street before people left the house every day! Gradually I got more ambitious. I'm not obsessive, I've never been particularly tidy, but I could see that with just a little effort I could make a big difference, so I expanded my area, eventually cleaning up our main street and around a two-mile radius.

I don't usually run into people, but it occurred to me that if I did, I should be identified, so I got a yellow gillet, one of those workman's vests to wear. In our town, people are known by what they do. Our mailman is “Ken the Post,” our milkman is “Hugh the Milk,” our teacher is “Bryn the School,” so my wife suggested I put “Rob the Rubbish” on the back of the vest. People came to know what I was doing after that. A woman who works in the Tourist Information Office told me that she had a litter stick that the council had provided but that was collecting dust out back of the office, so she gave it to me. No more bending down! I could now save my back and be three feet away from the rubbish I snagged. Nowadays, very nice people give me litter sticks, vests, even strong gloves.

I don't like rubbish, but I don't get angry when I see it. In fact, I have a curious and very positive relationship with it now. When I see something on the ground, I know that in a moment it's going to be gone and the natural beauty that's covered up by it will be revealed, and that makes me smile. When I remove “residual rubbish,” nature starts to breathe again. The more you do, the better the whole place looks. The BBC's resident poet, Matt Harvey, called me a “topographic groomer” and I love that! Rubbish gets me going in a good way.

I have started going into schools. I've found a fun way to make my points about how important it is to clean up your own environment, how kids will inherit their patch of the Earth sooner than they think. I do that by putting ten crisp packets on the stage and asking the assembly if anyone would come and pick one up. Of course, no one wants to stand up in front of their friends and pick up rubbish, which is exactly how I felt when I started. The kids umm and ah and shuffle their feet, and then, eventually, someone does it, then another, and another. They all stand there, feeling a bit foolish, holding the rubbish. That's when I tell them to look into the packet they're holding. I put a five-pound note in one of the packets, and you should see their faces. Now everyone wishes they'd gone up! I tell them that you never know what you'll find, and in fact, I have found quite a bit of money in my years of cleaning up, along with other things, like a fully stocked first aid kit, fancy clothes, and even, to my great amusement and quite a puzzle, three sets of men's and women's underwear halfway up a mountain! Of course, the real reward for me is in knowing that I've restored beauty to a place.

As for my town, if I stopped cleaning up I can't say it wouldn't revert to its former grubby self; I just don't know. I don't know that the parts of Everest I cleaned up will or won't be litter strewn again either. But, I know that seeing someone clean up with enthusiasm is contagious. From my own neighbors to people I've met hiking, to the helpful villagers and Sherpas in the Himalayas—including one guest house owner whom I had a word with after seeing her slinging empty bottles over a virtual precipice—I know, because they've told me, that most of them are far more rubbish-conscious now. Matt Harvey's poem about me has lines that sum it up:

. . . by picking up crisp packets, cling film and tin foil
Incongruous empties of Sprite and Drambui
He nurtures the flora and fauna and topsoil
And subtly recharges the Feng of its Shui.

REPRESENTATIVE DENNIS KUCINICH

Planning the U.S.
Department of Peace

Representative Dennis Kucinich is not your run-of-the-mill congressman.The
first thing you notice when you step through the huge oak-paneled doors into
his office is what's on the walls. Like the man himself, there is no pomp, no
pretension. In 1977, at age thirty-one, Kucinich was elected Mayor of Cleveland,
the youngest person ever to lead a major American city. He was the 2003
recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. And among other passions (and planks
in his presidential bids), he advocates for a Department of Peace so as to make
nonviolence an organizing principle in our society.

I asked Representative Kucinich to contribute an essay because he is so
straightforward and unafraid to be open about his real agenda and beliefs. I find
this refreshing when many politicians seem so fearful of deviating from a script
carefully crafted to offend no one that they might as well be created from a
single mold.

A
s far back as I can remember I knew I wanted to be in public service of one type or another. In the tenth grade, I envisioned myself running for national office. It was more intuition than anything. I just knew that's what I wanted to do. I ran for a seat for the first time when I was twenty-one and was on the City Council by the time I was twenty-three.Then I went on to become the youngest mayor ever. I never had any doubts.

Public service always meant a lot to me. I read lots of biographies, and that opened up a whole world of experiences. I was very impressed that people dedicated their lives to a certain purpose, whether sports, religion, science, literature, or government, and had the ability to change things. That seemed worthwhile. My family believed in tolerance, in understanding, that no one was better than anyone else. They taught me compassion for anyone who is considered different than the rest. They instilled in me the belief that I could be one of those people who bring about change.

I was the first of seven children, and my parents never owned a home. By the time I was seventeen, we'd lived in twenty-one different places, just trying to find a place to stay, and on a couple of occasions we lived in our car. But that never made me feel separate from anyone else. Being the eldest, I had to be resourceful, self-reliant, strong. But there were times when I could have fallen through the cracks. Fortunately, there was always someone there to catch me. For example, when I was sixteen I felt school could offer me nothing more and that the real world was where I needed to be. One of my teachers was there to catch me and to insist, outright insist, that I stay in school. And I did.

Racism has always upset me very much, and I have always felt I could do something about it. When I was four, one of my friends was an African-American child named Dwight. One day we were playing outside and a passerby said something very crude to me about why I was playing with Dwight. When I went home, I asked my mother about it and she assured me that the person who made the remarks was wrong and that I had a lot in common with Dwight. Dwight became one of my best friends. This was my first real brush with racism.