- 17 December 2020
- Posted by: Team for Youth Association
- Category: Fără categorie
Even though we know about the pollution problem, not only in the forest of Baia Mare but also everywhere else in the world, there is still a lot of ignorance and simply silence concerning this topic. And that is a circumstance that needs to be changed. Everyone can and should participate in it as it affects us, the nature and the animals living there.
A bag of chips takes ca. 80 years to decompose. A plastic bottle even about 450 years. Then, when broken down in micro-plastics, these affect the soil as they interfere into its system. The particles are interfering with the gases and minerals in the ground, that used to have a proper and working system in order to keep the ground healthy, steady and nutritious so that e.g. plants could grow in it.
Besides the soil and its condition, the materials of the thrown trash is often poisonous for the animals living in the forest. Birds use plastic bags in spring to build their nest. The young bird sometimes mistake these materials as food and start nibbling on it, which is a problem as they can not digest plastic and could be poisoned as well. Generally trash being close to the sources of food the forest animals use is dangerous for all their digestive systems and therefore their lives.
Since our project “There is no planet B” is closely linked to the environment, we thought it was time to actually go there and implement an activity out in the nature. Unfortunately, the reason for us going wasn’t so exciting as we noticed a lot of trash polluting Baia Mare, including the forests. So, we decided that we wanted to raise awareness about the pollution situation, somehow in a unconventional way…
For our little forest-trip, which we related to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 “Life on land”, we decided to go behind the parcul Regina Maria, a big park in Baia Mare, and continue our walk there slightly upwards from there, into the direction of the famous Virgin Rock.
What is for sure, is that we did find: a. lot. of. trash! Just as we expected. Already on the road up to the forest our trash-bags got filled a good bit, and surely if we would have had the capacities, dozens of them could have been filled easily. The most common material we found was definitely plastic, in any strength, bottles or simply broken pieces of hard plastic objects, lots of food packaging and many aluminium cans, which hints to the fact that whenever we eat or drink something there is a lot of wasting material involved, which unfortunately doesn’t get recycled or even just thrown properly but instead end up.
But plastic wasn’t the only source of waste we spotted: metal, old shoes, clothing, gears were also not too hard to find.
After about two hours we decided to go back, loaded with our filled bags and started to create something out of the trash. In the pictures you can see the result, just by going into the forest, collecting things that clearly don’t belong there, we got many options about what to create with it. And even though this gave us a lot of creative opportunities, one must realize that it is actually a very sad fact and a situation that needs to be changed immediately. And that can be started by each of us!
So whenever you go on a nice walk or even a longer trip, we want to encourage you to pick up some bottles, cans or other trash and bring it to a proper trash container. This is of course a very small action, but it might encourage other people doing the same as they see you doing it.
Let’s try to keep our nature clean together!