“Describe heroin, what’s it like?” he asked Wendy.
“Oh it’s euphoric, it solves all your problems… Except it kills you.

Sometime around 1994, Australian television personality Andrew Denton conducted an interview with Wendy Whiteley, widow of the Australian artist Brett Whiteley. Both Wendy and her late husband had a very well documented addiction to heroin.

The analogy stands. Plastic is a convenience that solves a lot of our short-term problems. Except it is starting to choke us.

In December 2016, I walked across the road for a swim in the sea. It was school holidays and the beaches were packed with families, tourists and locals alike. I saw a group of about 15 children with their parents and friends laughing and playing in a section of beach they’d roped off. They had a collection of buckets filled with small water-balloons that were being ferried over to the kids from the closest tap at the surf club, so the kids could have a water balloon fight right there on the sand.

[Read More…]