David Levy – Where Does Our Behaviour Come From? – April 2021
Whilst giving a presentation to a local Friends of the Earth (FOE) branch earlier this month I had cause to be grateful for Marinet’s full history of support from individuals and groups from within the FOE Movement. It was these people who voted Marinet to continue its path of individual growth and I am thankful they did so.
It has given us the ability to press for change, record our opposition to current day practice in our environment and seek out opportunities where a lone voice can be heard. All of this would not have been possible within the straight jacket of our parent company’s oversight.
The presentation was to inform this local branch, who are also a Marinet member, what is the programme of change that we have been pursuing this year. It has been on water quality and sewage discharges to sea and our rivers and the production of our report, Sand Sea and Sewage.
Sand Sea and Sewage was critical of water companies, and subsequent research by Marinet member, Brian Morgan, has highlighted the depth of complexity of the problem which led to two Marinet submissions to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. One focusing on Human Sewage, and the second on Animal Sewage (AMR) being discharged to rivers and outlets to sea, along with the implications which are starting to show on human health.
Whilst preparing the presentation I thought why such poor practice has become enshrined in our culture when we are so knowledgeable as to potential outcomes.
My first primary school project that I remember was to produce a drawing of a Tudor designed house where the overhang of the upper stories facilitated the evacuation of effluent to the central gully gutter below. You had to watch where you walked.
Where did this effluent go? Well it would find its way eventually to the river courses and, even though the Victorian engineers designed sewerage systems, the waste still found its way downstream in the rivers. Contamination wiped out the nationwide oyster beds which supplied cheap food for the poor of those times. Now the sea grasses and oysters which were so abundant have become food for the aristocracy. A fitting irony.
The problem is we have inherited behaviour patterns on how we handle waste and, with antiquated infrastructure, we muddle along. In our modern world we have in truth not designed systems that can deal with modern use and extreme conditions. We continue to muddle along as if there were some virtue in this and our Marinet report and related submissions clearly show that the conclusions we have reached. We are rapidly approaching some form of meltdown.
I watched a scientific programme last night promoted by Severn Trent Water showing various stages of treating water/sewage coming into their Birmingham sewage plant. In some ways it introduced the problem in an understandable manner but neatly skipped around the needs of ultra-violet treatment and proper temperature levels for anaerobic digestion for solid wastes. I was impressed with the use of microbes and discovering new forms of these in our fight to recycle waste into our environment. Equally I felt the gunk waste wipes and non-biodegradables were absent from the picture. Also the science park experiment on urine, although interesting a decade ago when I saw it, has not really progressed into a practical application as promoted so enthusiastically by the presenter .
The reluctance by Government to really press the water companies to clean-up their performance, especially as exceptional circumstances occur with regularity now due to Climate Change, has been woeful and ineffectual.
Marinet stands ever vigilant over this inaction, but also fearful as new and more complex viruses and bacteria line up to form diseases that attack our human health.
