The Dump

By Meg Lund

You have been driving down a country lane, when, around the bend, it appears. A mountain, no, several mountains, but not made by God. The smell sends a wave of nausea and the bitter smoke nips at your nose and lungs. This is a place we'd rather not be, a place we'd rather not see.

Don't turn your back or close your heart. LOOK! SMELL! BREATHE! Over there, discarded appliances of every kind, here, an old couch, broken chairs, shattered glass, lawn furniture, plastic bins, smelly filth piled higher and higher and wider and wider.

Can we pour dirt over these manmade mountains and have this stuff go away or return to the earth? We'd like to think so, but it just isn't so. It won't go away. It's accumulating in our oceans, destroying all life. The plastic molecules are ingested into bodies, and mistaken for estrogen, which result in hormonal disruptions, and will, eventually, render all creatures sterile. (For more info, here is one of many articles on the subject: http://marine-litter.gpa.unep.org/documents/World's_largest_landfill.pdf).

There is only ONE answer to the ecological crisis that we are facing. We MUST change our lifestyles. Nature will not tolerate our throwaway and consumeristic society. We can not consider ourselves pro-life if we are not doing something to ensure that life will go on.

Oh, but to live without plastic! That is the challenge, and the subject for another article.