Divers And Wastes: Do Not Simply Discard Your Empty Water Bottle

Divers and wastes… the litter factor?

Something caught my attention during my most recent trip to one of the shopping mall here in my hometown. I think this one is worth sharing and I hope to give you guys something to think about and may be to take action about it too.

What happened was, I bought a small bottle of drinking water to go with my lunch and carried around the half-empty bottle with me after that while doing some shopping. I finished the content of the bottle after a few minutes. My instinct told me to get that bottle refilled instead of buying a new one. I asked around and was lucky to find a refill shop. It cost me 30 cents for the refill. That’s 5 times cheaper than to buy a new bottle. That was against a single-use water bottle concept.

Here is the thing, the next time you are walking around in town or at the mall, remember this one: do not through away your empty drinking water bottle. Get them refilled. It’s cheap too. There are refill shops, counters, refill machines/water dispenser everywhere nowadays. Think nature: think twice before buying a fresh bottle of drinking or mineral water. Do not simply discard your bottle. Take Nature into considerations.

As a scuba diver, we always go hand in hand with nature. We are always expecting nature to give us a good dive, a clean and clear water, to see healthy coral reef system and so on. A lot of us are making good living out of nature and in this context; it is through scuba diving.

For the last 14 years of my scuba diving life, I’ve been to many places and one sad fact that we all have in common is the littering habit. It’s intolerable fact but then it’s a reality. There are always piles of domestic wastes floating around somewhere. This phenomenon is doing more harm than good to nature. And this sickening habit – irresponsible rubbish discarding – is contributing to the destructions of nature that eventually will affect us all. Hey, this is not a movie story we are talking about here.

Here is my argument, what happen to all of those empty plastic bottles that we threw away in the past? Where are they now? Have you ever given it a thought? Chances are, they are at rubbish dumping sites or worst… floating somewhere in the sea.

Over the years, we’ve “managed to contribute” to the pollution of nature. To the destructions of nature. To the killing of animals in the sea. To the extinction of plants and animals. This is something we cannot be proud of. We should be taking part in nature conservation by taking the first step that is to become aware of the importance of protecting nature.

My empty bottle story is only one of the examples. There are other things that we threw away; we discard, on daily basis. Products like plastic bags, plastic cups, empty cans, food wrappers, polystyrene containers etc that most of us take for granted, can be seen every where – in the parking lot, under the stairs, at the beach, camping sites, in your backyard, in the drain, river and other places. All of that rubbish made their way to their “final destination”: the ocean – the divers “playground”.

Divers or not, we are all human beings; we need to participate in conserving and protecting nature. We’ve heard it over and over again. It must start from within us. We need to educate ourselves first and take a proactive participations. It is a major concern for our world. For example, we use billions of plastic water bottles each year. However only around 25% of these plastic bottles get recycled. The usage data is increasing by the day, litter factor is also increasing, we are sending billions of wastes to landfill BUT the recycling factor is still very low. We need to do something because we need nature more than nature needs us.

A simple gesture and an act of kindness towards Mother Nature must come from us. As a diver, we want to see the ocean, that we are diving in, maintained and clear from any type of pollution.

Do your part. We need to take care of the environment and it will take care of us. Conserve and protect nature for more good diving in future and certainly for a healthy lifestyle.

Related posts:

1. Our Environment Deserves Better: Responsible Plastic Bags Use In Our Daily Life
2. Divers will have more water to dive in while the world is sinking as the Arctic and Antarctica ice is melting every single second