Eco anxiety

Published on 02 October 2019 in Teseo News

A few days ago I prepared to go to the office to work for a while. On the way, on the Mar y Sol - Pueblo Nuevo service road, I saw a man picking up plastics and waste and putting them in a bag. I saw that near him there was a small stall selling golf balls and an old small motorcycle. I immediately thought that he was a "bolero" trying to make nicer her “fragile” shop.

I have to admit that I was touched. Not because he was a bolero or because he was in his illegal position, in full sun trying to get a few euros to survive. I have been seeing it for years and I had never stopped because I do not like illegal positions and unfair competition that make stores and businesses that pay their taxes and are governed by the rules of our system. However precarious the situation of these people may be, our rule of law has the means (or I would like to believe that it has them) to help people in these situations move forward and reintroduce them into our official employment system.

But I don't want to leave the subject I was explaining. I was moved because he was the first person I had seen in years voluntarily collecting waste (especially plastics). I know there are many other people who do it but I had not seen them and it seemed like a "heroic" gesture. I stopped to talk to him but I was still cautious. I still suspected that his “eco” impulse was due more to a commercial purpose (to improve the aesthetics of his job) than to an altruistic purpose.

-Good morning ! what´s up?
-Look, trying to sell golf balls and collecting the garbage that is on this road. I can't sit still watching so much dirt. It is the 3rd bag I have collected this morning. Want to buy golf balls?

I told him the truth; I had stopped because his gesture had moved me and I had no interest in buying golf balls. He explained to me that he had been "rocking" the roundabout of Mar y Sol with another "Bolero" for years and, according to him, while he collected garbage his competition was dirtying. It seemed to me a very simple occurrence since the tons of plastic on those roads cannot be due to the other bolero but to the thousands of drivers and travelers who pass through there every week (including me) and who voluntarily throw waste through the windows. In any case there he was with his old bike, his humble life and his "heroic" action leaving me in evidence without knowing it because I had not had until then the courage to do what he did frequently. I do not throw things out the window and try to recycle at home but it is clear that this is already insufficient.

That Sotogrande and its surroundings are wonderful is not new, but we could have the streets and green areas much cleaner ..., not only for an aesthetic issue but to reduce our "eco anxiety" (term I heard for the first time Just a few days ago). I think that this “eco anxiety” is suffered by almost everyone: we have the feeling that we are doing serious damage to nature and, consequently, to our next generations and we are doing practically nothing to solve it. We see it every day in the news and in the environmental reports but it is as if we were watching an unpleasant movie ... and it does not move us enough to take a bag and go out to the street to collect waste and turn for a few minutes into small "heroes".

We must mobilize ourselves to clean those areas where the Government does not pay attention to. We must not blame the Authorities to justify our passivity and I am sure that by doing this we will feel much better apart from greatly improving the aspect of our environment with the ecological and economic benefit that this would have.

With the help of the Sotogrande Newspaper, we will convene meetings for those “volunteers” who want to participate for 30 minutes or 1 hour to collect trash and document it. It will be interesting to know how much garbage there will be in our area and how beautiful everything will be when we "get rid" of it.