The Mission
Today on The Regrowth Blogject we bring you The Mission. Aka why we do what we do. I don’t know who reads this but if you read this you need to know the low down. If you haven’t heard, people and governments across the globe are constantly bitching about climate change, pollution, etc. etc. They’re not wrong. There are huge problems which our natural ecosystems and environments face that humans appear to be largely contributing to. The goal of The Regrowth Project is to cut into this by at least putting some of this trash in its place. If we can find out how to use that trash, even better.
So why do we focus on picking up trash? For starters, it’s pretty simple. Anyone can pick up trash. Also, anyone can see trash by the side of the road or in a field or in the ocean or whatever and know it’s a problem. It’s a very visible impediment to the things that should be there. If you look, you’ll notice shit like little crabs trying to eat the caps of corona bottles. That crab has absolutely zero idea what’s going on and it’s sad to see. We the people have to gain some respect for the plants and animals that have been with us since B.C. and we’re the only species that’s capable of doing it. You think some sea turtle that’s choking on a plastic straw is gonna do something about this? No shot. Going back to my original point, the visibility is key. There’s a lot of people out there who straight up don’t believe in climate change or think it’s a hoax. No matter how hard you lobby those people to do something many of them will just never believe it. Having said that, anyone with a brain can see that trash in the environment is bad and it’s so easy to pick up.
Why do we use the shopping bag metric? Isn’t a shopping bag a weird and unspecific way to measure the amount of trash cleaned? Damn right it is, but that’s how we got started, and here’s the real reason it’s important. It takes about 2 seconds (see: 5 minutes) to fill a shopping bag up with trash in a given area. Not even kidding. Hit up any park or the street or something and you’ll find trash to put in there. A shopping bag is light and easy to find. If you’ve ever been to a grocery store you’ve probably gotten one of those plastic bags. What do you even use them for? Many people just toss em haphazardly. They’re honestly a huge percentage of the trash we find on a regular basis. We can at least get some leverage out of em by using them to clean up trash and putting it all in the trash system.
Long term, the move is most certainly to find a use for all this trash or replace it with stuff that’s biodegradable or reusable or something like that. But we’re not in the long term. We’re here right now and today and the problem is a pressing one. There’s no time to waste. The mission of RGP is to help bridge the gap to the day Elon Musk puts a colony on mars and everyone drives an electric car and we generate energy using gravity and humans live forever and everyone rides a pet dolphin to work because we telepathically communicate with them. A lot of people (see:clowns) want us to cut out the manufacturing of all this plastic and everyone should bike to work and have 6 houseplants and eat only soy beans and eschew the use of airplanes and oil based infrastructure. I got bad news: yes that would go a long way to helping our planet’s ecosystem, but it’s never going to happen. As of right now, plastic and oil and all that jazz are just too economically efficient. People gotta eat first and foremost and that’s fine. But they’re right in that we need prompt action to solve this. Anyone can pitch in, in a small way, to help us move forward and reach a green future where shit is dope and nature is thriving. It’s not out of the question yet.
How can you help? Read the blog, follow the IG, but most importantly, get out there with a shopping bag and clean some trash. Every bit helps. You could save some crab from breaking its jaw on a corona cap or some bird from eating a shred of plastic bag because it has a brain the size of a peanut. I joke, but this is dead serious. But deadass, spread the word about RGP and maybe we can get somewhere. If you really want to support, check out theregrowthproject.com, theregrowthproject on Instagram, and retweet this on Twitter if that’s where you see it because as of right now that’s the only place I post these. Happy cleaning. (1670 bags as of today nbd)
