How Being Less Active on Twitter Made Me a More Active Activist

During this year's Lent I had a 'fast' from all social media. It was interesting to notice what I missed and didn't miss: Facebook I've not bothered with since, but Twitter seemed a much harder habit to kick. I like to think I do a lot of my moral and ethical campaigning on Twitter - making sure that the voices of the big hitters on the issues I care about get heard, signing petitions and nudging those in power for example. 

As time went on though I found myself kicking my heels a bit with nowhere to add ranty comments or 'right on brother' back slaps to Tweets I agree with. One of the issues I felt cut-off from was plastic pollution. The mainstream news was sharing the horror of oceans barely visible through acres of plastic waste. It was absolutely vile and I wanted to shout loudly to whoever would listen that it must be stopped immediately. 

I found a bit of an outlet for my ire as I walked our dogs through Rocher Vale, a local post-industrial area of countryside along the river Medlock. I muttered about how much plastic litter there was and about how we have taught people to use the countryside as a leisure resource without teaching them how to look after it. Runners and cyclists pass through it with earphones in glad of the traffic-free paths yet oblivious to the natural world they pass through and casually toss a water bottle into. Similarly I railed at the laziness of fellow dog walkers who whilst being prepared to scoop up dog poop seem less willing to carry the bag more than a couple of hundred metres to a bin. 

Yes, all of these other people need to learn about how to look after the countryside, we need a national strategy to reduce single use plastic and educate people. 

And yet, in the end I don't think many of those people are likely to change their behaviour very much. Most of the people I rant with on Twitter think like me, they probably watch Countryfile and love David Attenborough, they are not the people who throw plastic bottles into the countryside willy-nilly. 

So how are we to reach all of these bad people, the lost causes who we look down on from our moral high ground. 

Well we're not going to are we, certainly not in the short term. 

I've just had a look at some of the pictures and videos of the state of our seas being shared on Twitter  for Earth Day. They are awful and you can see how many people agree that they are awful by the number of times that they have been retweeted:  thousands and thousands of them. Let's hope all this sharing makes a difference. 

Back on my dog walk I had a moment of epiphany: there was a way that I could have a real impact on the environment even without retweeting. I spotted an empty two litre bottle of Coke that someone had left on the river bank together with crisp packets and biscuit wrappers, the remains of an impromptu picnic by the looks of them. It was a mess and a gust of wind would soon whip the bottle into the river and off it would go ocean-bound. 

I bent and picked up the bottle, and the packets and wrappers and immediately the area looked better than when I arrived. It was that easy. Nobody else was going to make a quicker more obvious impact on the environment there and then than me. The thing is, once you've done it and realised how easy it is to make the environment better when you leave than when you arrive, it becomes a bit of virtuous circle: you like the look of the countryside without plastic so you see some plastic so you remove it and the countryside looks better. 

You should try it. I'm back on Twitter and I couldn't help but think, when I was looking at all the self-righteous comments and retweets today that if for every one of them a piece of rubbish was picked up, that's an awful lot of plastic not going to the ocean. 

Also just think how much higher the moral high ground will be when you pick up the plastic AND do the retweet and the smug comment!