Rivers or Plastic Waste Drains?
I
used to read stories during my childhood how our cultures have shaped alongside
the rivers and how they were home to a variety of fish and farmlands.
Over the past 100 years or so, all these connections have been severely damaged
and people lost the spiritual connection with our rivers and water bodies.
With its application in every product we use, life without plastic is not imaginable and hence the solution is to use it responsibly and recycle it. Their durability and long lifespan are the biggest reasons why they have turned dangerous to our species. However, we can reuse them endlessly if we use judiciously.
References:
We
live in an ephemeral society where everything is made available so conveniently
through single-use plastics. It has become a daily routine for all of us to
throw them without knowing where they really end. It’s hard to digest that the
plastic which we dump at our houses/public places etc. eventually enters our
rivers, nearby water bodies, and oceans.
Plastics
as we know safeguards our food, drinks and maintains sterile conditions. Its
applications have touched every facet of our life. Our society is increasingly
consuming plastic materials every year and most of these are employed in
applications with a short lifetime. Unfortunately, we haven’t seriously thought
about the issues that could pop up with the single-use plastics and even today
we don’t have proper waste management systems in place. Everyone should
acknowledge the fact that as members of the society we all contribute to plastic pollution through the products we buy, the choices we make and our ways of
disposal.
Most
single-use plastics naturally find their way into our water bodies and become
widely dispersed. Owing to their low value, high durability, and poor plastic
waste management they have become a burden to our society, marine ecosystems
and our rivers and oceans are choking on plastic waste.
Rivers of plastic
Plastic
waste is released into our marine environment through a number of pathways
including rivers, beach litter, fishing and shipping activities. Today, rivers
are the primary entry points for all oceans as plastic waste is dumped
irresponsibly in them carry this waste over long distances to vomit in our
oceans.
River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans, Source: The Oceans Cleanup
It
is estimated that just 10 river systems carry 90% of the plastic that ends up
in our oceans, where in Asia is the source for eight of them – the Yangtze,
Indus, Yellow, Hai He, Ganges, Pearl, Amur, Huangpu, and the Mekong. Waste which is
not disposed properly at a catchment area, ends up in the tributaries, rivers
that join into the seas, oceans.
A
whopping nine million metric tons of plastic waste enters our oceans annually making
it difficult for several marine creatures to survive in such a toxic
environment. This is equivalent to one garbage truck of plastic waste being put
into the oceans every minute. In spite of our efforts to catch and remove the
garbage floating in our oceans, with the rate of our consumption and disposal
in our oceans plastic waste is going to outnumber the marine life in our oceans
by 2050.
Seasonality of river plastic inputs to oceans
According
to an estimate, it is seen that more than 70% of the plastic waste input from
the rivers occurs between May and October which is the monsoon season.
#Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The five plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. Source: The Ocean Cleanup
Today, a staggering five
trillion pieces of plastic waste currently litter in our seas and oceans. Due
to rotating ocean currents known as gyres, this trash gets concentrated in five
parts of the ocean knows as ocean garbage patches. The Great Pacific Garbage
Patch is the largest of the plastic accumulation zones and is situated halfway
between California and Hawaii. It is extremely challenging to clean up these
gyres as they spread across millions of square kilometers and travel in all
directions. These can be also called as smog of plastic waste particles circulating along with the ocean currents.
Why India’s most revered river, Ganga is a concern
for all
The Ganges, worshipped by millions of Hindus stretches over 2500 km from India to
Bangladesh is highly exploited. As the main water source to many cities and
industries, today suffers from every type of pollution unimaginable.
The Ganges rises in the southern Great Himalayas and passes over five
Indian states along its 2,500 km journey before it joins with the Brahmaputra. Even
though the river has rich historical, cultural and religious importance, we
have completely ignored the health of the river and there is a clear discord
between ritual reverence and the way we treat.
Plastic litter along the banks of Ganga (Credits: Hindustan Times)
India’s
beloved Ganga is the world’s second-biggest contributor to the plastic litter
in oceans and the pollution swells during the southwest monsoon peaking in the
month of August. The Namami Gange project
aimed at rejuvenation of the river Ganga has not yielded any fruits so far. Unfortunately,
every minute tons of plastic and garbage is ending up in our oceans through the Ganges.
How Mumbaikars transformed Mithi River into a sewage drain
The
Mithi river in Mumbai is nothing more than a sewage drain with its stream
consisting of 93% domestic waste and the rest industrial waste. This river is a
critical stormwater drain for Mumbai and empties into the Arabian Sea. With
its journey through slums and squatters at Dharavi, Powai, Kurla, Saki Naka and
Mahim, it is clogged with plastic, garbage, and sewage.
Source: Sorry state of Mithi river (Image credits: Rohit Sharma)
During
rainy season, this drain instead of flowing into the Arabian sea seeps on to the
streets of the city along with the waste. Unregulated dumping of sewage, waste
is the biggest threat to our rivers and municipalities are blind to these acts.
The ever-expanding urban stretch has caused many rivers to narrow and spill
onto streets during floods.
Many
of our official documents, maps have started referring to the age-old rivers as
drains. Through the trash we dump, household and industrial drain water we
divert, they have been converted into veritable sewers and toxic pools.
Do we see this as a Global Challenge?
Our
generation has transformed flowing freshwater rivers into rivers of plastics,
garbage, and sewage. We have destroyed the life in every water body that is
flowing on our land and have made them carriers of toxic poison.
Our
vulnerable oceans are under continuous assault by us as our production and
usage of plastic has outpaced the waste we collect and bring it back into the
system. We should not only advocate the
concept of a circular economy but start living it through garbage reduction,
segregation at source, efficient collection methods and infrastructure to
handle them. Producers and promoters of single-use plastics have a major
share in the problem.
During
the search operations for the disappeared Malaysian
Airline Flight 370, many satellite images revealed a group of objects
floating on the sea in the Indian Ocean. It captivated everyone in the hope of
finding the people missing but it was a shocker to many. They were all trash,
pieces of broken and abandoned fishing nets, plastic bags, and bottles
reiterating the fact that our oceans have become garbage dumps.
Plastic
recycling has turned into an extremely complicated thing owing to several
factors like the inefficient collection at the source (single stream), poor
awareness in the society, lack of infrastructure to process waste, several
grades of plastic and the technological challenges around them in processing.
The
fastest way to make a huge difference is by investing in infrastructure,
garbage trucks, sorting and collection centres, and formalizing the waste
industry. This will institutionalize the way how waste should be collected at every source and processed to be
brought back into the system so that it doesn’t end up in our water bodies.
Funding for these initiatives can always be obtained by proposing a small tax
on every plastic that is produced and consumed. This will generate enough
revenue to finance the activities and carry them without any issues.
The
#CleanSeas campaign was launched by
UN Environment back in 2017 to engage governments, public and private companies
to join the fight against marine plastic pollution. Every citizen needs to be
aware and actively engage in addressing the problem in their daily lives and beyond.
We should act as a catalyst for change, transforming practices, choices and
habits that our neighbors, friends, and family follow in their lives.
Reduce our plastic dependency:
With its application in every product we use, life without plastic is not imaginable and hence the solution is to use it responsibly and recycle it. Their durability and long lifespan are the biggest reasons why they have turned dangerous to our species. However, we can reuse them endlessly if we use judiciously.
Many
countries have imposed bans on disposable/single-use plastics such as straws,
cups, plates, cutlery, and packaging. We all have to play our part by refusing
them and put an end to its usage. Undoubtedly, these efforts have to be scaled
up so that the consumption of plastic waste comes down.
Governments
and companies have to promote the vision of a circular economy where every
material based out of plastic is designed to be reused or recycled and not dumped.
Plastics were never an enemy to our environment, it is we who have turned it
against us and our planet.
Companies
should actively invest in research and work closely with various suppliers in
their supply chain and come up with newer products ranging from recyclable
products that support the circular economy and compostable products that can be
used as manure under homegrown conditions.
Conclusion:
Plastic
has made every product become accessible to the bottom of the pyramid in our
society. In this process, we haven’t paid enough attention to the environmental
consequences as all of them can enter our water bodies easily. Given the role
plastic plays in our society today, going with the plain agenda of demonizing
it will not bring any change.
In
a span of a single generation, plastic bottle and single-use plastics have seen
their journey from making the lives of humans better to being cursed. To be a
part of the solution, one can at least carry reusable bottles, minimize the use of
single-use plastics and educate your circle. This also calls for a responsible
approach from each one of us and follow 4R’s judiciously (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse
and Recycle).
The
need of the hour is a blueprint to transform the filth around us into wealth with
a comprehensive policy framework to organize and commercialize the plastic
recycling process. All the stakeholders in the plastic industry have to come
forward and raise necessary social awareness about responsible use and
recycling.
"Plastic pollution and climate change are parallel global emergencies"
We
all should feel uneasy to buy coffee in a takeaway plastic or paper cup lined
with plastics and awkward to buy a bottle of water. There has been a good
progress with many countries signing up for the #CleanSeas campaign and making
specific commitments to protect our oceans, promote recycling and cutting down
single-use plastics.
It
is better late than never to decouple our economic development from the large
scale environmental degradation.
It’s
time to break the way how we relate our lives with single-use plastics.
Ocean cleanup: https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/
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