You know what its like. You’re driving round the M25, singing away to ‘Islands in the Stream’ or showing Adele how ‘someone like you’ really should be done justice to, and you get to the end of the apple you’re eating. Do you: a. put the core into a specially designed glove-box-composter you had made specifically for organic waste on the move? b. keep the core ‘safe’ for later disposal? or c. toss it out of the window?

If the answer is ‘a’ you’re definitely either lying or someone so sad I have nothing more to say to you. If its ‘b’ then well done. But ‘c’ is the one we justify. “Well, it’ll decompose, naturally”, “its not like its plastic, destined to roam greater London for eternity before choking a fish to death!!” “I’ve never even seen a fish on a motorway”. “What’s one apple core in the grand scheme of thousands of square miles of M25?”

This is not a judgment upon you. You slovenly, environmentally unfriendly, eco-devastating, heartless BASTARD!!! No, its just a thought.

So how about up in space. You’re in your spaceship, singing along, arm out the window and when you drain the last of your coke, you simply toss the can outside. Why not? Space is… space is fucking big. What’s one coke can over an area so vast that the human mind cannot conceive it? The end of the universe is 14 billion light years away, I really don’t think they’ll notice one little red can (the person throwing a can out of the window is hardly likely to drink diet coke, is he??) in the immense vastness of space, will they?

In fact they will. And they do. And its becoming a bit of an issue.

Space debris is now reckoned to be around 7,000 tonnes. Big apple core. And because its space, and thus a vacuum, nothing decomposes, nothing rots, rusts or does anything other than just find its gravitational orbit around the nearest heavy mass. Which, for the purposes of this enquiry, is planet Earth. And there they stay. Forever.

When they started putting satellites up in space in the Cold War, to spy on everyone, no-one gave a thought to the ‘end-game’. When the satellite stops working, is finished or done with. What do you do? Well, its space, innit? There’s plenty room for a few old rust-buckets flying round at 35,000 miles an hour; discarded booster jets, jettisoned landing gear, what’s the problem?

The problem is that 50 years later we are dependent on satellites for football on tv. And nothing can jeopardise that. NOTHING. There are other uses for them too, apparently. And now, its dangerous. The space agencies monitor all debris over 10cms long. And its not like you can send a dust-truck up there to collect it. They’re not powerful enough for take-off.

Its a problem.

Be careful what you throw away. And where.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx