Plastic Pollution

 -Ishwor Bhattarai, ME(2018)

As I was walking through the pavements of Baneshwor, a gust of wind blew, covering my face with a plastic bag. Annoyed, I cussed the wind, swiped the plastic away from my face. I looked around myself and saw myself surrounded by plastics. Flying around me were chocolate wrappers, plastic bags and other plastic products.  On seeing this, the first thought I had was, how could someone be so careless and litter the grounds??? How could they not care about the cleanliness of the city they live in??? And then I recalled my activities that day. While watching the cricket match, I myself had left the plastic wrapping of my food on the bleacher. Afterwards, I had dropped all the chocolate

wrappers on the pavements of Kirtipur as I walked my way back to the bus stop. Ashamed at myself, I pondered about this topic for some more time.

I surfed the internet about the effects of plastic pollution. The problem plastics creates starts with its manufacturing. Its manufacturing leads to the release of toxic chemicals some of which are carcinogens and may lead to cancer. Not only that, plastic pollution is the major cause of extinction of some species of sea creatures. And on the first and foremost list of this extinction are sea turtles, which consider the plastics to be jellyfish and eat it. Furthermore, if plastic waste materials are dumped in landfill sites, their reaction with water may lead to the production of harmful gases. Also, the disposal of plastic materials in bodies of water leads to the deterioration in the condition of drinking water since plastic releases some toxic chemicals such as Styrene Trimer, Bisphenol A.    

A question arose in my mind, “Although plastic pollution has such adverse effects, why are we still using it?” From the food wrappers to grocery bags and toys, a lot of everyday essentials used by us are made of plastic. Since plastic is cheaper to use than other bags, it is being overused. Although we know the plastic bags are harmful to our health, we use it for its cheapness and ease. We are all more concerned in saving money instead of our health. Another question that arose was, “How did our city become so dominated by plastic products within a decade?” I blamed the government for not having placed the dustbins in the pavements or in other public places; that the government was responsible for the pollution of the city. That’s the first thing we do. Something goes wrong, we blame the government.

However, it isn’t the government to be blamed; it is us. We are the ones disobeying the laws. Take a good look around your locality and you will usually notice a heap of waste materials and garbage next to the poster “No waste materials and garbage are to be thrown here.” and the bins, if present are on the far corner where no one is likely to go. It isn’t that the government didn’t try managing the wastes. About 5 years ago, the government had dispatched some thousand bins and about a 100 vehicles for the wastage management of the metropolitan with the aid of China. However, within a month after being dispatched, half of the bins went missing, stolen by people for personal use. Furthermore some people, for the greed of a token amount of money, prefer throwing their wastage in rivers rather than subscribe to the metropolitan waste management system. Another reason for the escalation of the problem of plastic pollution is due to the lack of recycling facilities. We, due to the lack of recycling facilities do not find it important to separate degradable waste and non-degradable waste. We rarely recycle the plastic materials we have manually even though it is possible. Owing to this lack of recycling, more and more of the plastic products are demanded which escalates the problem.

If this problem is allowed to escalate and no appropriate measures are taken, there will soon come a time when plastic will be a major cause of the mortality rate of humans and by which time the sea creatures will be no more in existence. Thus, I think it is our responsibility to start taking actions in plastic pollution management at a personal level before blaming others for it.