As the second series of Blue Planet came to an end a few months ago, host David Attenborough brought to the viewers attention the destruction that plastic causes to marine life, poisoning the oceans. He stressed, through the sad and eye-opening true life footage of suffering sealife, how important it is for us to act now and reduce the amount of plastic we use before it’s too late.
Since this show and Attenborough’s bold message, the reaction has been huge as acknowledgments of the fact that we need to dramatically reduce plastic to save our oceans splurge the media.
The supermarket Iceland have vowed to eliminate plastic from all of their own-brand goods, last night the BBC dedicated a section of The One Show to this topic, they’ve also banned single-use plastic along with so many more examples of people taking action. This is not to mention the amount of discussions I find myself in on a daily basis about how easily we could halve the plastic usage through more logical packaging and how my workplace as a small business in the country can make a contribution through reusable coffee cups as well.
Attenborough is in his nineties, he’s towards the end of a massive career having made a huge name for himself and impacted upon our knowledge about the natural world greatly and what we can do about conserving it. What better way to finish? To complete his career with such a stark insight that will in turn have a huge effect upon the future of the world.
Talking about this with my Dad over a few delicious cocktails the other evening, he made a poignant statement. He told my sister’s and I that he’s always told us, ‘if you do nothing else you’ve got to make sure you make your scratch on the world’ as David Attenborough has done here.
Not everyone is going to invent something new. I understand this. Not all of us will find a key piece of research into the cure for cancer or deliver a powerful message after a long and successful career which changes the way we all think, though I know my dad would love for us all to aspire to this.
It’s great to have huge ambitions, however, the important message that I took away from our conversation is that as long as you do something in life to make a difference to others then you’ve done it right.
Great, if your achievement is something huge (and you should always strive to achieve big) fantastic, but even if your mark is kindness and a good heart, well, that still counts. You may contribute to a huge discovery or be a part of a large conservation project or write a top novel, which are all incredible and should be celebrated. But helping others, helping strangers, giving advice, being generous, helping charity, changing someone’s perspective and many more small actions which occur daily should be commemorated too.
Whichever way you make your indent on the world and others around you just be conscious of doing so. As long as you can say in your ageing years that you’ve given to and got out of this world as much as you possibly could, then I personally think you’ve done a good job.
In the mean time though, do your best and think of alternatives to plastic.