A while back, I heard that there would be a high tax put on disposables here in Israel, and that would go into effect on Jan. 1. Only nine days ago I learned that the date was changed to Nov. 1.
I called my daughter, who is due to give birth soon, and told her to buy what she will need for a kiddush/bris now, because by the time she has a baby it’s going to cost a lot more.
I’m not really affected by the increase in the cost of disposable dishes, since I hardly use them at all, not during the week and not during Shabbos. It definitely takes a lot more time and financially you can say if I would spend that time doing an income earning activity, I’d financially come out far ahead of standing at the kitchen sink washing up. For me it’s not a moral position, I don’t feel superior or judgmental of others who don’t do this – I just have a reduce/reuse/recycle kind of attitude towards everything, and I’d rather avoid adding so much plastic to the landfills.
That being said, I really empathize with the difficulty this will present for those with families and very busy schedules. When a day is packed full with activities, putting another task in is daunting. I often have dishes waiting to be washed in my sink. One daughter-in-law said that it’s discouraging to help out by washing dishes at my house, because they never end! It’s true – everything is washed and then the next person comes along to prepare something to eat, and voila! – more dishes in the sink that was empty for seemingly just a few minutes.
Back to the legislation about disposables. On the face of this, it’s something you would expect me to rejoice over. After all, all those plastics in the sea…it’s actually horrible how much waste we produce on our tiny little planet. And each of us can make a difference by making small changes.
However, I have concerns about the legislation that will continue to amplify with time, with the stated concern being protection of our environment and climate change. This is going to impact much more than disposable dishes. I expect that those who don’t go along with this agenda will be accused of not caring about the environment and humanity, since don’t you know, we’re all going to die if we don’t get this climate issue taken care of? (Kind of like if you spent years learning about, practicing and sharing about natural health, you were accused of being selfish and not caring about anyone if you didn’t agree with the government mandated solution to the health crisis.)
I absolutely support grass roots initiatives to educate and to inspire behavior change to protect the environment. There are so many little things we can do. I compost, I’ve had a vehicle in the past that I converted to run on waste vegetable oil, I currently have a vehicle that runs on propane (a much cleaner fuel than gas or diesel), I buy used, I minimize consumption in different areas and I’m constantly learning more and doing more.
We were given a beautiful world and I’d love to leave my tiny piece of it a little bit better physically for me having been here. I DREAM of having a large piece of land and restoring it with permaculture practices, which I practice on a small scale in my garden. I believe in the interconnectedness of all parts of this world, the people, the creatures, the flora, the water – all of it. The same principles that apply to healthy family living apply on the larger scale.
What I don’t support is heavy handed legislation, with fear, ridicule and shaming used as tactics to force change. And – here we go – I don’t believe climate change is the threat that we’re told that it is. Remember that I said that – one day it will mean more to you than it does right now.
What I just wrote about the climate will be banned in the future, but since we’re ahead of the curve it still feels like we have free speech – on this topic, at least.
Avivah
It seems very clear that the same people who don’t care one drop about human lives also don’t care about the environment, so they must be pursuing some sort of dubious (or worse) agenda. I haven’t heard much about this issue but for sure am going to look into it now on the alternative news. Thanks for the heads up. And by the way, I didn’t hear a peep about paper goods going up until the end of last week and I only heard it from my kids who heard from other kids so I wasn’t even sure if it was true. It’s totally outrageous that they sprung this on us out of nowhere. I only wish this was the worst of it. May Hashem protect us all.
You don’t have to look on the alternative news to see what is planned – you can go directly to the World Economic Forum website to find out their plans. I don’t think their timeline through 2050 with specific targets is there, though. The only positive about watching one of their videos on youtube on The Great Reset (what they call their plans right now to change everything), with 40K thumbs at the time, was three thousand were thumbs up and the rest were thumbs down. I’ve never seen that on a video before. There wasn’t a single positive comment; I was happy to see that many people saw through their attempted sell of their plan. That was last year, I don’t know if it’s still up.
Look at Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030. Those are the official UN documents – if you read the agendas, think carefully about what they are saying and understand the consequences. Research that – for an entire day after learning about the details of this, I was more down than I remember ever being about news. I just didn’t want to live in a world like the one being planned and thought the elderly are fortunate they won’t have to live to see this take place. But then I picked myself up and reminded myself that Hashem is behind all of this. It’s very discouraging stuff, but you’ll understand the world events much more accurately when you realize what the plans are and how it all fits together – none of what is happening is a coincidence.
The morning after I wrote this, I went to the store and my son asked the cashier why the paper goods were up so much. He rolled his eyes and said, thanks to Bennet, it’s all politics. He went on to say it’s *supposedly* (heavy emphasis and skepticism on his part) because of the climate, and that soon the meat will be affected since that’s also bad. They’ve already started to go after meat and I knew it would be explained like this (cow gas and stuff like that) but I didn’t expect to hear a cashier in Israel already saying it the morning after I wrote what I did. I pay attention to what people in the food industry say, because they hear things behind the scenes that we don’t hear until later on.
I don’t know when the change in paper products was decided – I only got a heads up a week before because I participate in a buying group and there was a short message that they were going to offer bulk paper goods that week because of it (which were completely sold out). For my daughter’s bris, I brought all the paper goods (which I had overpurchased for the sheva brachos we made a couple months before) and several people commented about the price going up and it’s good I bought it all now, and told me stories they were hearing about people buying massive quantities (10,000 shekel orders) from the small seller in their area, who was sold out. (That was a couple of days before the increase went into affect.)
Every single day, I ask Hashem to protect us all.
would love to hear more about climate change not being an issue
Hi, B, welcome! Two days after I wrote this, I learned that alternate positions on climate change have joined the list of things that can’t be discussed. Google and Facebook will be monitoring everything written about this topic to ensure it meets their standards of truth.
I often wonder if people understand how seriously alarming all of this censorship is. Setting aside all emotion and all facts on whatever the topic is, when we see some positions being banned, that should make us put on our thinking caps and start asking questions. Censorship has historically been in place to enforce an agenda that is being imposed, and if that agenda was all for the good, there should be no concern about open discourse about these topics nor should it need to be imposed.
If you’re interested in doing some reading, look at the response above and that will get you started.