Disposable World ( ?)

Ah ... America... hearing the name itself creates a vision in ones mind. A developed society, super fast freeways and prosperity abound. But after living here as a non resident alien for 7 years my perceptions about America have changed to a materialistically developed society with clogged freeways due to lack of public transportation and having such a prosperity that generates a mind boggling amount of trash.

The use and throw culture is everywhere here, drink water and throw the bottle, eat food and throw the plates and cutlery, wipe your nose and throw the tissue. A disposable alternative for each and everything. Disposable cars, heck even sometimes disposable spouses. Sadly the rest of the countries are also embracing this trend at an alarming rate.

Recently the city of Seattle tried to impose a plastic bag tax of 20 cents to encourage people from bringing their own bags. This proposal was voted down by a clear majority. The results surprised me, I thought Seattle was one of the greenest city in the country. I cant even imagine the state in some of the less green ones. Several excuses (ahem ) reasons were given as to why this was such a bad idea... no clear answers were given as to what was going to be done with the money , Europeans have this tax too but really that model wont work here etc . One good thing that came out of this though is people became aware of the plastic issue that is choking the oceans (see here) .

Things HAVE to move at a faster pace to reverse this use-the-planet-as-a-dumpster-till-you-don't-see-the-trash trend. Out of sight should not be out of mind in this case . Its time for everyone to start caring for the planet ... by being a conservationist and also by thinking outside the box.

There are umpteen number of things one can do to reverse this trend by being a conservationist .... for starters get your own bags while grocery shopping, one step further is to get your own take out washable boxes in restaurant, think twice before buying a shiny plastic wrapped product etc.

However if you are someone who wants to take this one step further you can think outside the box to attack this problem . Some of the things that people have tried are building roads from plastic , finding microbes which will degrade the regular plastic faster . Really the sky is the limit Time has come to stop living as a "Disposable World" and no reason should stop us from marching towards that goal.

The "Hello World" post

So I've been thinking about creating a blog for a really long time... but being the extreme procrastinator that I am, it took me 5 long years to really start something.

Now, what will you expect from my public diary? I love to travel, I care about the environment , I am a big foodie and I think I have an opinion about everything. So naturally the posts here will mostly be about travel, the environment, earth, food with a few sprinkles about everything else thats going on under the sun.

So Helloooooooooooooo World!