Reigning the monster
Come October 2, 2019 – Government of India is all set to ban single-use plastic in major cities, towns and villages, that rank among the world’s most polluted.
Items such as polythene bags, cups, tumblers, plates, 500ml bottles, straws, sachets, forks, knives and cotton ear buds, are all single use plastics. The ban on the first six items will clip 5% to 10% from India’s annual consumption of about 14 million tonnes of plastic, according to GoI estimates; curbs will also be on e-commerce companies to limit plastic packaging that makes up nearly 40% of the plastic industry. Cigarette butts also are on the anvil – yes, butts contain cellulose acetate, a plastic (not cotton) filter that’s not biodegradable and contains carcinogens from tobacco.
Solid waste management remains a grave challenge given the population and geographic spread; ~25,940 tonnes of plastic waste is generated daily of which 10,000 tonnes remains unsegregated ending up in landfills. In the last decade alone, the world has produced more plastic than in the last century.
Silent killers
While the global focus is on larger single-use-articles, items such as toffee/chocolate/biscuit wrappers, tetrapaks, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, razors, sachets that pack anything from chips to tobacco to tea/coffee powder / milk/oil/detergent/condiments/handwash/, even kids toys, footwear and plastic business cards, are silent killers tossed away without realizing their potential to damage our environment as much as plastic bags / straws. These articles were found to be the major cause of floods at various places in 11 states during recent monsoons, choking the storm water drains and sapping earth of permeability. Mumbai realized way back in 2005 when 315 people were killed due to stagnant water borne diseases following heavy rains and banned plastic bags but not enforced. Delhi followed suit in 2008, never enforced. It’s the same story in Bangalore, Shimla, Tirupati, Pune, Hyderabad, Kozhikode, and all over.
Returned with thanks
Plastics when discarded comes back to us. WWF’s research found that we consume ~250 gms every year. The plastic, the non-biodegradable material disintegrates into micro-particles. These particles leach into streams that water field crops, in our tap-water, and enter salt and aquatic animals from oceans, ultimately ending up on our plate. To know how much plastic we consume, watch yourplasticdiet.org.
The clothes we wear contain upto 60% of synthetic fiber, and estimated that a single load of weekly laundry wash+dry could release 700,000 fibers into water, detergent based pollution is a bonus Polyester fabric recycles once along with PET bottles into polyester yarn; the strands don’t hold well in more recyclings – ending up in landfills or burnt.
Oceanic choke
Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now dwarfed! Increasing evidence shows that all the oceans of the earth are polluted with discarded plastic items. The ocean with the largest amount of plastic is the North Pacific, followed by the Indian Ocean, the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, the South Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. Altogether, the 5 trillion pieces of plastic waste in our oceans weighs as much as 268,000 tons, which is equivalent to 38,000 African elephants. Indian Ocean ranks a high 2nd with 1.3 trillion pieces estimated.
Mountains too…
Himalayas, the majestic sentinels of India are ridden with plastic waste, 94% of which is single use plastic / packaging. ‘The Himalayan Cleanup’ was carried out in 12 mountain states of India on May 26, 2018 (Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh), involving ~15,000 volunteers of 200 organisations in 250 critical sites. In 2014, trekkers from Nepal removed ~25 tons of trash and 15 tons of human waste, and its increasing year on year.
We can!
Next time you go shopping, try these simple alternates – carry a cotton bag, a metal/glass water-bottle, use public transport, avoid munching on toffees/chips or sipping a tetrapak juice – if you must, hold on till you find a trash can. Look around to buy unpacked-clean groceries, buy natural fiber material / clothes, return plastic packaging from products you buy even from brand stores, its cool! Travel responsibly – carry a trash bag, do not throwaway disposables or broken / unusable items, carry water.
Sustainable Living
Adopting a sustainable lifestyle needs commitment – to explore, experiment, learn, practice continuity and above all, loving. Because beyond all of the frightening news; beyond the frustrating politics; beyond the failed national laws and international agreements, there is one question – how do you want to live your life? We can choose to feel defeated, helpless and frustrated; or choose to be grounded, purposeful and hopeful.
Love for all beings living, and thus living sustainably, requires a complete change in lifestyle, achievable by small simple steps – through the clothes we buy, the energy we use, the food we eat, even the toothpaste we brush our teeth, the soap we bathe with. We have learnt to adopt products and practices without realizing their impact; now that we know, it’s easy to re-adopt to earlier safe practices and clean products.
Every choice we make impacts others – through its creation, its distribution, its use and its disposal. Most likely we’ll never know – or even see – who we are impacting. But they are out there, nonetheless, suffering – or thriving – based on our choices.
– Facts and figures collected from across wide web world. Credits at respective places.
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