The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Gets On Ziggy Marley’s Nerves
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant heap of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, continues to be a huge source of great discontent for Rebellion Rises singer Ziggy Marley.
Recently Ziggy, who resides in California, shared an Accuweather video on his Instagram page which highlighted the damage the estimated 600,000 square mile garbage heap was doing to the marine environment.
Accuweather noted that the patch was more than twice the size of Texas, and three times the size of France, and was getting larger, leaving environmentalists gravely concerned.
“Remember Our Planet. We need action by industries, governments, citizens. What are we waiting on? Total destruction of our eco-system! #fedup #accuweather… so called world leaders,” Ziggy, Bob Marley’s oldest son and a staunch environmentalist captioned his post.
The Tomorrow People singer also took umbrage to the “mass-production” mode of operation in the lifestock industry, which he said was tearing away at the Earth’s Ozone layer.
He made his point in response to a comment from a follower, who suggested that people should “go vegan” and pointed out instead, that he was taking a pragmatic approach to conservation.
“Everyone won’t be vegan, but the mass industrialization of the livestock industry to satisfy the world demand for meat is one of the biggest contributor to the rapid wearing away of our ozone layer,” Ziggy explained.
“So if citizens consumed less meat or no meat, then those industries would be forced to adjust their practices. It’s about balance and living in the cycle of nature and gathering our food in a respectable, sustainable conscious way instead of just blindly following our taste buds,” he added.
The Accuweather post also highlighted that all the marine litter in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was accumulating from countries bordering the Pacific Rim, and contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing about 79,000 tonnes.
It noted that pollution is detrimental to the environment as well as the welfare of marine life and even humans.
“Marine debris is not just unsightly. It is harmful to the plants and animals that call the ocean home. From entanglement of large migratory animals like whales, to being mistaken for food by sea turtles and sea birds, marine debris causes physical, and at times lethal harm to marine animals,” the Accuweather report said.
A few years ago, Ziggy had asked his tour management to replace disposable water bottles with reusable ones, after hearing about the damage caused to sea life by plastic waste and even bought an electric car and implemented water conservation strategies in his home.
However, the revelations in the report heavily bothered the Reggae superstar, who insisted that his conscience is still not clear, despite the mitigation measures he has undertaken in his daily life.
“Tired of only seeing it tired of only talking about it I’ve made a effort to reduce my use of plastic but my conscience is still not clear. Now I’m going to double my efforts to not just reduce but eliminate plastics from my consumerism and everyone should double their efforts as well,” he noted.
“As a community of citizens on planet earth we must dictate to industries the direction we need to go in we cannot keep supporting ours and our children’s, our friends and family’s demise for our comfort and convenience. It is not convenient to destroy our planet,” he added.
Ziggy also contended that the recycling of plastics was, in all good conscience, vastly ineffective.
“The recycling thing won’t solve it. We have to stop or drastically cut our use of plastics and consume with consciousness not with gluttony and disregard live and work with the seasons, and nature. There needs to be a massive I mean massive sea change and starts with us the citizens of planet earth,” he said.