When I was a child, stuff of comfort meant my grandmother’s gigantic goose down duvets under which I hid in the summer afternoons at siesta time, and from the world. From whatever’s lurking under the bed. And the world has loads of those monsters. I can no longer escape under those duvets but the monsters are around me just the same. So I started gathering stuff of comfort that come my way and sewing these virtual patches, strands into a quilt of goodness. Though it’s far from being like Granny’s duvet, it’s gonna be large enough to fit all of you under it.

About a year ago, on World Oceans Day, we gave word that the environmental mission of 2015-2016 is centered on ‘healthy oceans, healthy planet’ and we crossed our fingers for Boyan Slat and hoped his ocean and marine life saving project would fare well. The 22-year-old Dutch founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, the world’s first system to passively remove plastic waste from the oceans of our world, has since been recognized by Katerva, winning his project the Nobel Prize of Sustainability this year. And it’s on its way.

Stuff of comfort. That there are Boyan Slat’s out there, that there’s a way to start battling the results of our own doing.

However, as many fabrics, the patches of my quilt have two sides as well.

There’s a backside too. It’s quite depressing to realize to what extent we have affected our planet and co-habitants in our egotistical selfishness, inactivity and lack of awareness. Over a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic pollution each year, from ingestion or entanglement in our waste. It’s when sea turtles have plastic straws and forks stuck up their noses… When whales wash up dead with car parts and plastic in their stomachs…

Especially after we have barely saved gray whales, for example, from extinction. The League of Nations adopted the ban on commercial whaling in the mid-1930’s, which was actually the first international agreement of its kind, but grey whale populations have still not recovered from their century-long mass hunting. So give ‘em plastic instead. And give us plastic too, as the toxic chemicals it releases in our waters end up in our food chains and in our bodies. And yet, looking around, I still witness random people dropping all kinds of garbage freely, brainlessly in the streets… Not even into trash cans, not even with the slightest intention of recycling, let alone refraining from buying products from and in plastic. It is insane. Like peeled bananas pre-packaged and wrapped in foil. The supposedly environmentally conscious Billa supermarket chain had those on shelves at one point.

So now we root for The Ocean Cleanup, this gigantic sieve that can collect sea plastics from up to 3 meters deep, which can then be recycled into new products or fuel. Though, wouldn’t it be great, if there was no use for it at all? Wouldn’t it be great if the source of some momentary comfort was not in finding out that the larvae of the darkling beetle, the humble mealworm is one of our superheroes?

Research of senior engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, Wei-Min Wu, has shown that microorganisms in these tiny worms’ guts biodegrade plastic and so they can live on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene.

Wu said

Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem

I’ll just quote Delta Spirit:

Well it’s time all you people, turn around / For the life we’ve been living, messing around / The blood we’ve been spilling will bleed us dry / The life we’ve been killing, is your life like mine.