bottles in the trees

Scrolling down you will find recent posts of plastic bags in trees in NYC. So I was especially amused to see Bates students put bottles in trees to make the case against using bottled water. I wish I could find the photo I have seen from the Phillipines of children walking on a beach ankle deep in plastic bottles.

There is a lot of bad news about the environment but let's not forget the progress we have made. Cottages along lakes used to pipe sewage right into the water. As a kid, we washed our laundry with cakes of Ivory soap and rinsed our clothes in the lake leaving a white soapy film on the service of the water. And as for old cans, we'd row our boat far away from the dock, fill each can with water and watch it disappear down down down to the darkness at the bottom of the lake. This was not something we did in the dark of night, this was accepted practice. It was one of the of the jobs that kids were given to do. Now the environmental police appear out of nowhere in their boats if there is any kind of transgression. Trees along the lakeshore are protected, septic systems pipe the waste up hill away from bodies of water. There is good news. Here and there.