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People Who Are“Triggered” By A Plastic Bottle Cap

Once you unravel the green-washing lies, you too will be unsettled by the blob monster that is our garbage

Christyl Rivers, Phd.
3 min readOct 21, 2022
Photo by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash

ROARING RIVERS

Formerly Very Unpopular Strong Opinions Blog

Our unnecessary garbage

It doesn’t happen every single day, but sometimes, I feel a clenched fight, flight, or freeze, response when I see someone toss a capped bottle in the trash. I would even go so far as to say, although it has only happened once, maybe twice, in my lifetime, I think a similar reaction by many of us, is more felt than we realize.

Like all trashy thoughts, this is largely unconscious.

Like our other garbage, the stress goes somewhere, as all energy must do.

No, I don’t fall into hysterics or faint. I take a deep breath. And carry on.

When the “libs” are triggered by something so seemingly small, of course, the Earth trashers who sell us the stuff are thrilled to death.

It is easier to use visual imagery to confront our numbers and our waste but to imagine the vast scale of suffering and death in our oceans (and sometimes land areas) is not something…

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Christyl Rivers, Phd.
Christyl Rivers, Phd.

Written by Christyl Rivers, Phd.

Ecopsychologist, Writer, Farmer, Defender of reality, and Cat Castle Custodian.

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