©2009 Full Circle Magazine.
30
30
September 2009 Vol6 No9
Sharinf the cake
accepting and friendly they were towards us
– complete strangers to them. Your heart
would have melted…
Samantha Glaister – Office Manager
The excitement mounted as we were
loading the bakkie, but that was nothing in
comparison to when we arrived – the
reactions and excitement of the children was
truly a wonder to behold. You have no idea
of how well off you are until you come face-
to-face with someone who has nothing at all,
yet who’s happy within himself. Makes you
stop and think. The little ones’ voices raised
in song to Madiba could lift anyone’s spirits.
This truly was a moving
experience for me and I hope
that we have made their
tomorrow a little better than
their yesterday.
Lilian Botha – Designer
Lisa and myself were
very excited about the day
and I must say ... we
were NOT disappointed!
The friendly little faces
and excitement were
infectious ... but we
immediately became
acutely aware of the
terrible living
conditions that these
people have to cope
with.
It was such an honour to hand over the
donations that our gracious readers have
made and I would like to thank everyone
who contributed from the bottom of my
heart!
Soon, two little arms were stuck out
towards me in the “pick-me-up-please”
position and I had a boy bundle in my arms
for most of the morning while we laughed,
sang, clapped hands and ate delicious
chocolate cake. On the way back, Lisa sat
very quietly in the car, contemplating the
experience and then said, “Mommy, I would
like to come back and do this again...”
Mmmm... it’s simply amazing how little
seeds can grow!
Lisa Botha (7) – Lilian’s daughter
This was the best day in the whole world!
Think about other people who don’t have
money ... we went to them and gave them
the happiest day of their lives!
There were hundreds of houses made of
pieces of steel and board and are very small
but the people live ever so happily in them.
The little kids have brave hearts because
they are so happy even though they have
nothing... We had a cake with Madiba’s face
on top and we all played with the ball and
that was a lot of fun! We gave the children
blankets, toys, clothes and things for school!
When I’m bigger I will do that a lot more
times!
Happy Birthday MADIBA !!!
From: LISA xxx
is a part of the Gauteng housing department’s
programme aimed at eradicating 20 informal
settlements. The walls of the new houses are
made of polystyrene plastered with three coats
of cement. Listen to Mr Copelowitz: “The only
challenge was changing the mindsets of people
to recognise that these houses are of the
highest quality and are built to last.” Hmmm.
Here is not the place to crack wise. For sure,
however, our species will never run out of fools.
The term ‘nurdle’ isn’t in any of my English-
language dictionaries. You can find it in
Wikipedia, however. It’s a familiar word to
cricket aficionados. It’s used to describe a
particular way in which a batter selects to hit a
ball. But this article is not about cricket. It’s
about plastics. And, cricketers don’t use, at
least not yet, plastic bats or balls in playing
their game. They do don much that is plastic in
their shoes and other protective gear, however.
In the world of plastics, nurdles are small – a
couple of millimetres – uniform cylinders.
These bits are the raw constituents of plastic
production; the nurdles are melted down, fused
and moulded to make all sorts of things.
Nurdles ride the waves and winds of the
world’s oceans. These plastic particles are
deposited on beaches almost everywhere.
Here, echoing an ignominious irony, the plastic
nurdles, or pellets, are sometimes called
mermaids’ tears.
Nurdles don’t photodegrade or biodegrade
readily. They do abrade, however. They get
smaller. In short, the amounts of plastic
floating, sinking and mixing in the world don’t
decrease. They increase all the time, and more
and more of the quantities involved consist of
more and more smaller and smaller particles.
It’s no longer just turtles and dolphins
swallowing plastic bags that we have to worry
about. It’s now zillions of much, much smaller
organisms, even microscopic ones, ingesting
zillions of microscopic, indigestible particles of
plastics that is a concern.
In truth, we don’t yet know fully what minute
bits of such polyplastics as polyethylene,
polyester and polypropylene do to animals, let
alone ourselves. What can be said with some
certainty is that even if the production of this
stuff were to be stopped today, there is
enough of it present already for it to be with
us for tens of thousands of years. Virtually
every bit of plastic made in the last 50 years
still remains with us in our environment.
“These plastic particles
are deposited on beaches
almost everywhere”
This fact leads to a potentially harrowing
prognosis, since it’s known that all sorts of
toxins stick to plastic particles. For example,
endocrine disrupting chemicals – the so-
called gender benders – have been found to
cause sexual deviation in several animals,
ranging from small fishes to polar bears,
which ingest plastic particles. Expect to hear
more of this kind of thing in the future. Unless,
unless, some new microbes capable of
breaking down plastics come along. It’s a
long, a very long, shot, however.
What about recycling, you say? Ah, yes,
recycling. If plastic bottles can be turned into
garden furniture and fleecy jackets, isn’t that
the way to go? Yes, of course, it is. The
argument isn’t about whether or not to
recycle, but about how to achieve the best
results. There are technical and economic
problems attending the recycling of plastic
bottles. Not all are the same. For example,
there are polypropylene heavy-duty bottles
used for shampoos, high-density
polyethylene bottles used for milk and
polyethylene terephthalate bottles used for
water. It’s all something of a difficult and
costly nightmare for sorting. Just think of the
many kinds of blister packs for articles in
your hardware store. Based on this alone, a
zero-waste plastic economy has less chance
of achieving success in the next 20 years
than putting men on Mars. Still, we must
keep on trying to recycle old plastics. Every
step towards zero waste makes things a little
better. Moreover, we cannot know of novel
developments, as remote now as television,
bio-engineering and computer chips were to
the Victorians, that might save the world
from a long-time, lingering penury induced
by plastics.
We have plastics and we have democracy.
We have climate change and we have
genetically modified food. These are some of
the stand-out phenomena of our time. If
democracy is to mean anything to us, and
particularly our political leaders, then we
should understand the profound forces that
influence our lives. We can’t do better for
ourselves without knowing what it is that is
going on around us. Our conscience, apart
from anything else, tells us to recycle
plastics. A conscience it is that makes us
behave well when nobody is watching.
