P for plastic and P for problems. Remember that 'Say
No To Polybags Campaign' in your school? Not just your schools but newspapers, bus
shelters, and traffic junctions are carrying the message. In some states like Goa and
Himachal Pradesh, the authorities even banned it.
|
 |
| Now the plastic
manufacturers are frowning. 'If this ban plastic drive is a success, we are finished'. So,
they have got shrewd. They have formed a plastic lobby and give arguments in favour of
plastic. Oh my God! Imagine life without plastic they say... GT investigates the
plastic problem. |
Fantaplastic?
Plastic, plastic everywhere
Plastics will rule, so people beware.
So many words hurled outright at plastic. Well! it has got to be real bad I guess. BUT,
I knew this gentleman who met with a serious accident in which he lost his legs. He was so
depressed and lost.
‘I will never be able to walk again’. ‘…fate cruel fate, why did it
happen to me?’
Abracadabra! The plastic magician came. And holy wonder! His damaged legs were replaced
with brand new plastic legs. He can walk now and plastic made it possible. Why, your pen,
tiffin box, geometry set, computer, television, cars – all essentially are made of
this fantaplastic material. Renewable (environment friendly) energy technologies like wind
and solar cannot be done with traditional materials. You need plastic.
But what about everyday ever ready plastic?
LDPE….HDPE…polypropylene….polyvinyl chloride…poly this and poly that.
They are laden with problems. Problems of disposal (plastics are non-biodegradable) and
problems of toxins (they can be poisonous). The more people use plastic the more they are
choking on it. So, something had to be done. 'SAY NO TO POLYBAGS CAMPAIGN' was a step in
this direction. Plastic loving industries defending their arguments say...
‘Plastics helps in conserving the environment by lessening the load on scarce
natural resources like wood etc…..’
Hmmm...but one forgets that the base material of plastic is oil and that is also a
finite natural resource. Materials which plastic replaces like bamboo and wood are atleast
renewable while plastic is a finite resource.
‘Our daily life without plastics – it simply cannot be imagined. From ball
point pens and moulded chairs to electrical switches and plugs, plastic dominate over
every household item…’
 Sure enough, there is
some truth in the statements. This phony material is actually quite vital for some
applications. But do you think we are using it sensibly? I mean, can we justify the use of
so much plastic in packaging. Why doesn't anyone question so much use of throw-away
plastic?
Will you believe this? Of the plastics that we use, 60percent is disposed immediately
or within ten days, 30percent within a month and only ten percent stays for a longer
period according to Iqbal Malik, a Delhi based environmentalist!
Have you ever tried to think how your grandparents managed? They did not have all this
faddy plastic. When and how did the plastic bag replace the cloth bag? Or the throw away
tiffins, the steel tiffins? Only the last fifty years have seen such a boom. How and why
did such a boom actually take place? Blame your lifestyles, that quest for comfort, fad
and freedom. Freedom from what? It is a wild race up there. There are industries who work
with the sole intention of making money. They lure us into using as much plastic as they
can. We happily get conned. Plastic is bad for the environment. We see, we know yet the
use in everyday life more continues to grow.
If plastic is such a
wonderful material then where is the problem?
PLASTIC
ECOLOGY |
PLASTIC PLAY |
Plastic
remains in the environment forever. It can...
The problem with plastic is that while all phenomenon in nature are
cyclic, the plastic phenomenon is not. This un-natural material is not a part of the raw
material – waste cycle (raw material for one acts as waste for another and
disintrigates to become a part of nature). It remains in the environment forever. On top
of that it is toxic and can do a lot of harm. It can...
...be dangerous to human
health
If a person is exposed to excessive emissions by plastic it can lead to
damage of the immunity system, blood, kidneys, and nervous system. It might even cause
defects in the brain.
Risk in production
During all processes, from loading, mixing, palletising to maintenance,
workers are exposed to hazardous vapours from the additives and softeners used to make
plastic. Grinding of plastic generates polymer dust, which is combustible  and often leads to accidents. This is inhaled
by the workers. Manufacture of even the least toxic plastics like polyethylene and
polypropylene can harm workers, what to talk of the severely toxic ones like PVC
(see toxic!).
Risk in
use
During use, it is not so bad because plastic in itself is a stable compound
but due to change in temperature and pressure, it might become unstable and release
toxins. Burning of plastic in fires might release organohalogens in the air, one of them
being dioxins. Dioxins are known to cause cancer.
After useful life
Have you ever thought of where plastic goes after it is no more use to us?
Landfill sites, or to dumping yards which keep growing bigger and bigger? Ours is a poor
country and waste management is not a thing we do well. One solution in the industrialised
nations has been to incinerate the waste, ie. burn it at very high temperatures to get
energy. But plastic waste contains toxic gases like dioxins, the effects of which are well
known.
...threaten
marine ecosystems
Imagine, you are on board a ship and it stops moving. Parts of the engine
are blocked and there might be an accident. What a scare! That is precisely what plastic
can do. Those plastic nets, abandoned after fishing actually become an entangling web for
fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Plastic litter on beaches goes into seas and oceans
eventually. Having bright and attractive colours, marine creatures mistake it for food and
eat it AND DIE. Here are some of the endangered marine species and how plastic effects
them:
Turtles mistake semi-transparent floating plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them. The
plastic gets entangled in their gut and they starve to death.
A cape fur seal caught up in a large piece of plastic, may simply drown and die of
exhaustion as they find it difficult to swim. Or the plastic may kill slowly over a period
of months or years as it bites into the animal causing wounds, loss of blood and/or
severing of limbs. And we glorify plastic!
You will never imagine this, but even the birthday party balloons you float into the
air reach seas and oceans harming marine animals and birds.
polymermonomerethyleneHDPEpolypropylenepolyethyleneLDPECH |
A
Down To Earth Supplement
