The plastic revolution

Never before perhaps has it been spelt out so clearly: indiscriminate generation of garbage is lethal. More than 200 people died on the ou...

Never before perhaps has it been spelt out so clearly: indiscriminate generation of garbage is lethal. More than 200 people died on the outskirts of Manila recently when a huge mountain of waste collapsed on a community of scavengers 8212; ironically, the very people who make a living from collecting rubbish and sorting it out. For the most part, of course, they were not the ones who produced that waste, but as it happens so often, they were the ones to pay the price for a worldwide culture that encourages disposability8217;.

But the only thing to be disposed of is just such a mentality. Before you chuck that styrofoam cup after draining it of the last dregs of coffee, or dump that disposable8217; diaper, ask yourself once: where does it all go? Space is finite, so are the city dumps. There8217;s only so much landfill a community can generate before the plastic leaches back into the soil, before toxicity spreads its venom through the arteries of plants, rivers, the very air we breathe.

Despite the hype about recycling, the three-way arrows stamped on enlightened8217; producers8217; wares, we aren8217;t doing nearly enough to save the world. Oh yes, plastic is useful; if man invented something, it8217;s definitely because of its utility. Disposable syringes make sense, so do some varieties of non-biodegradable packaging material. But in our everyday lives, we generate huge amounts of waste, at least some of which is avoidable. Consider the plastic bag your vegetable man hands out so insouciantly 8212; do you really need it? Couldn8217;t you just pack it all in in the trusty cloth bag your mother depended on? Or the takeaways and home-deliveries. They8217;re the last thing one would want to grudge the time-weary professional after a hard day8217;s work, but mentally pile up all the aluminium foil that is being discarded at that very moment and you may just lose your appetite.

In India, at least, a section of us still have our trusty network of raddiwallas and domestic help in place. But the onslaught of plastic progress makes its presence felt in the ever-falling price of old newspapers. The raddiwala tells you sadly that no one uses paperbags anymore; everyone8217;s switching to plastic carrybags and disposable8217; that word again containers. Even the kachdawalla will want you to dump your garbage in a plastic bag 8212; it8217;s so much easier to carry away, they say.

Non-biodegradable plastic is one of the prime targets of environmentalists across the world, but it shouldn8217;t be the only one for us ordinary people in our ordinary lives. We, too, can make a difference 8212; by spurning that plastic bag for cloth, by buying our aerated water in glass bottles instead of plastic, by demanding glass milk bottles instead of plastic pouches, by using that sheet of paper on both sides, by recycling vegetable waste and tea leaves as manure.

The media plays an enormously significant role in this respect. Sometime ago, this newspaper thought up a Kick Plastic campaign, which was propagated through its editions in various cities. The feedback was not uniform the western centres, for instance, reported a far more enthusiastic response than northern ones but the campaign did strike a chord. In Mumbai, entire colonies boycotted the neighbourhood kiranawala8216;s flimsy, colourful bags till he stopped giving them out; in Vadodara, a number of boutique-owners started making cloth bags from scraps of material to pack their wares in.

It8217;s not difficult to make a beginning; it8217;s far more taxing to sustain it. But the payoffs of sparing just a little thought about where our waste goespromise to make it worthwhile.

Sometimes, you see, waste can kill.