A swift moving river choking with human plastic waste. This kind of human dysfunction is apparent all over our planet, but particularly in the poorest places. We dump eight million tons of plastic waste into our oceans every year. It’s a human disgrace… an ugly reflection of what we have become…parasites, ravenously exploiting the planet’s resources to exhaustion….leaving mountains of plastic detritus and other man made waste in our wake. Since 1970, the human population on Earth has doubled to 7.6 billion. There could be 10-12 million humans on Earth by later this century. We are fecklessly outstripping our planet’s ability to provide in a huge and perilously unsustainable way. We are pushing our Earth’s living biosphere to the brink.
Humanity must reinvent itself in a way that is sustainable and life-affirming. An important part of the solution is natural biodegradable materials that can replace all the things we make from oil-based plastics. It turns out we can use fungus to do many of the things we do with plastics. When we are finished using these non-toxic, natural materials, they are easily reclaimed by the Earth as nutrients that help sustain life.
This is part of building a future that is life-affirming and sustainable. It can happen, but only if we stand together and demand it.