Ode to okra and the curse of single-use plastic

I had never met okra during my mostly European upbringing but l definitely feel that we have a growing (ha, ha) relationship now after our time together at Bonlee Grown Farm.

It is a vegetable that grows remarkably fast - about 4cm per day - and so needs harvesting every other day to ensure it doesn’t get too big and tasteless. It grows elegantly in tall, strong plants and it is easy to walk along the rows as you pick. No back-breaking stooping or difficult reaching is required. Each vegetable has one large leaf that protrudes just below it acting as its personal powerhouse. Once you harvest the vegetable, you also cut off the leaf so that the plant then pushes nutrients to the other newer vegetables. This makes the plant neat and tidy as it grows (well-behaved, if you will) which appealed to me.

Every time that I picked the okra, I became lost in thoughts about how clever our hosts, Ray and Amy, are at ensuring that all of the okra plant and vegetables are used so that the effort in producing them is maximised. The vegetables go to farmers’ markets and any excess crop is made into pickle also for sale at the markets. When pickling, the chopped off tips and misshapen vegetables are fed to the farm’s sheep as are the leaves which are cut off the plant during harvesting. Customers at the markets buy the pickles and return the jars to Amy to be reused. This basic form of regenerative circular economy, where every part of the plant is used and the waste managed, feels respectful to nature and our planet. And it felt restorative to be part of the process.

Baby okra

Two days later, it needs picking

While I felt that sentiment often at the farm during our time there, I was deeply shocked by the astronomical amount of single-use plastic consumed and dumped in the USA. Every food item, from supermarkets, fast-food outlets, petrol stations and sport stadiums, comes with cumbersome plastic packaging and more plastic utensils and accoutrements to eat it with. Waste separation was not evident in public places or in most homes we came across. So a vast, terrible volume of that plastic is buried in landfill where is takes centuries, and sometimes even millennia, to degrade. When I mentioned it to people as we went through our month, they mostly looked blankly at me, bemused at the idea of separating this rubbish for proper waste management. I can't help feeling that the basic fault lies at the feet of the government who don’t make it policy to separate and recycle waste, educate their citizens or explain why it is better for our future. I realise that we are really very fortunate in Europe to have policies, waste management schemes and public education in place to help find a better balance between use and disposal. I know that we still have work to do but it feels like the USA is really a very long way off a circular economy for plastic.

I leave the States wondering how we can help people find more grá in their hearts for our Earth...

Le grá,
Gill