Nature Conservation Day: A Call For Shared Responsibility

On the occasion of Nature Conservation Day (July 28), it’s apt to discuss the plastic menace.

Regulating use of polythene was not new. Prior to July 1, 2022, such regulations were tried out on a piecemeal approach.

On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on 2nd October, 2018, five municipal corporations and the religious town of Puri in Odisha witnessed a change in lifestyle with a ban on use of plastic by Odisha government. By 2020, the ban would have covered the entire state, as announced by the Odisha chief minister.

The CM’s announcement came following worldwide concern for use of plastic bags and materials that are ending in oceans, causing health problems and damaging environment at large. Even Bhubaneswar’s over-40% garbage is plastic that just simply moves around the city without disposal mechanisms.

Well, any step for better environment is always welcome. But sometimes, the word ‘ban’ does not do a justice to garbage as the ban can be lifted any time depending on situations. We have seen how openly polythene was used when Cyclone Fani hit Odisha in 2019, and then during COVID-19 pandemic. So despite many cities and countries having introduced ban on plastics, their entry into lakes, rivers, oceans didn’t stop.

Many cities and nations deal with plastic through smarter ways than most Indian states or cites do.

Puri, in 2021, benchmarked itself with Los Angeles, London, Singapore, etc. for drink from tap with 24×7 water supply capacity. That means the use of single plastic bottles would have no place in Puri town.

However, no such transformation is visible. Rather, during Rath Yatra, single-use plastic bottle dominated the waste composition. It’s time to work towards incentivizing plastic use in a manner so that the producer takes back products after use as a responsibility or introduces recycle tax on plastics. Municipal bodies must ensure plastics are not mixed with normal waste by generators, but are disposed of safely.

In Germany, a deposit return scheme was introduced in 2003 where customers pay a 25% deposit on every bottle of soft or alcoholic drink. This excludes milk, baby products and medical liquids. The move has seen almost 99% of the country’s plastic bottles returned for recycling. Since the introduction of the scheme, an estimated 1.2 billion containers have been diverted from landfill.

Glass bottles are also subject to the scheme and have a deposit of between 8 and 15 cents added to the cost. Once they are collected, they are sent back to manufacturers for cleaning and refilling. In July 2021, Germany banned the sale of single-use plastic straws, cutlery, cotton buds and food containers in line with a EU directive intended to reduce plastic waste.

Norway is another nation to have found success with a deposit return scheme. An impressive 97% of the nation’s plastic bottles have been returned for recycling since the scheme began in 2014. The Norwegian government has set up more than 3,500 reverse vending machines and 11,500 registered collection points across the nation to encourage residents to recycle.

Up to 92% of the bottles recycled hold material that is of such high quality it can be re-used in drink bottles — sometimes more than 50 times. This improvement in recycling infrastructure was paid for by packaging manufacturers, with the government taxing firms for producing single-use packaging. They are also made to cover the cost of plastic waste collection and recycling.

In 2016, France became the world’s first country to ban manufacture and sale of single-use plastic cups, cutlery, plates, and takeaway food boxes. The law requires all disposable tableware to be made from 50% bio-sourced materials that can be composted at home. This will rise to 60% by 2025. The legislation was passed after statistics from the French Association of Health and Environment revealed that only 1% of the 4.73 billion single-use plastic cups thrown away each year in France were recycled.

France also banned shops from distributing plastic bags in 2016 in a bid to reduce the 17 billion which were used nationwide annually. Of those 17 billion bags, 8 billion were estimated to be littered annually before the ban. Most shops now offer either paper bags or reusable plastic alternatives, at a cost of a few cents each, and encourage customers to reuse their bags.

Known as one of the world’s best recycling nations, Sweden is following the policy of a ‘No Plastic Ban, Instead More Plastic Recycling.’ The reason for this is that Sweden has the world’s best recycling system. Most of Sweden’s rubbish gets burned in incinerators. The system is so good that less than 1% of Sweden’s household waste goes into landfill.

Like these nations, if we introduce incentives for plastic ban, then over a period use of plastics and its production will be reduced and our focus will shift from banning to recycling. Similarly, markets will reinvent the products with less use of plastics and consumers will stop using polythene, etc.

Complete ban is a long-term goal, but in the short term, the government needs to stop using plastics in meetings, conventions, sports, office premises, hotels, tea vendors, hawkers, marriages, etc. to build confidence amongst the masses.

Remember plastic has many valuable uses, as we have become addicted to single-use or disposable plastic with severe environmental consequences. One million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year. Half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away. Researchers estimate that more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since the early 1950s. About 60% of that plastic has ended up in either a landfill or natural environment.

Since the 1950s, the rate of plastic production has grown faster than that of any other material. More than 99% of plastics are produced from chemicals derived from oil, natural gas and coal all of which are dirty, non-renewable resources. If current trends continue, the plastic industry could account for 20% of the world’s total oil consumption by 2050. So it’s high time to slow the flow of plastic at its source. The government also needs to improve steps of managing plastic waste.

Interestingly, a lot of plastic ends up in the environment of which only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. About 12% has been incinerated, while the rest 79% has accumulated in landfills, dumps or the natural environment.

As an example, cigarette butts whose filters contain tiny plastic fibres were the most common type of plastic waste found in the environment in a recent global survey. Gutka strips in India are flooded in cities including Bhubaneswar.

A staggering 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year but how does it get there? A lot of it comes from world’s rivers, which serve as direct conduits of trash from the world’s cities to the marine environment. Plastic waste — whether in a river, an ocean, or on land — can remain in the environment for centuries.

The same properties that make plastic so useful, their durability and resistance to degradation also make them nearly impossible for nature to completely break down. Most plastic items never fully disappear, they just get smaller. Many of these tiny plastic particles are swallowed by farm animals or fish who mistake them for food, and thus can find their way onto someone’s dinner plates.

They’ve also been found in a majority of the world’s tap water. By clogging sewers and providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes and pests, plastic waste especially plastic bags can increase the transmission of vector-borne diseases like malaria. If current trends continue, the oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050.

While the USA, Japan and many European countries generate significant amounts of plastic waste, they’re also relatively good at managing it. About half of all of the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans comes from just five countries — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries are experiencing rapid economic growth, which is reducing poverty rates and improving the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. But as these economies grow, consumption booms and so does the use of plastic goods.

The global volume of plastic waste continues to grow, and some of the biggest producers don’t manage their waste effectively. But the world is waking up to the problem, and governments are starting to act. There are a number of things that governments can do — from running public awareness campaigns, to offering incentives for recycling, introducing levies or even banning certain products outright.

In the last decade, dozens of national and local governments around the world have adopted policies to reduce the use of disposable plastic. More than the ban, there is a need for more shared action. As over the last two decades attitudes to waste are changing, it has been increasingly viewed not as a waste, but a resource and this has led to a number of moves at international and national level to adopt approaches to reflect it in ground.

At the end of the day, every person should share responsibility for the environment. Each one makes decisions and takes action, which affect life around us. It is up to all stakeholders, including producers, markets and users, to tackle the growing plastic waste problem — a problem that has to be solved at local level and needs local solutions, linked to larger management plans.

Perhaps Bhubaneswar has an opportunity as well as a challenge to demonstrate a plastic-free city by using the upcoming Hockey World Cup in 2023 by hosting the mega tournament without generating plastic waste and set the momentum, not just in the capital city but the nation at large.