Fighting Against the Plastic Pollution

Sudipta Dash (India)

Honorable Mention

Imagine yourself to be a ten years old kid who lives in a small house by a beautiful sea. One night, you unexpectedly woke up hearing some peculiar noise outside. You couldn’t understand what happened, so you opened the window and saw that the entire surrounding was not as you had known. Your sweet green garden was filled with plastic wastes, the pavements were blocked with piles of plastic, you couldn’t even see the sand of the beach or the waves of the sea – as far as you could see, “plastic plastic everywhere; no other soul to care”. You would have scared, I know.
Now, you must be thinking I am mad as it’s a silly story to begin with. But, imagine this to be a gradual change in the course of sixty years and in your seventies, you will encounter the exact same situation. Are you scared now? The question is of great importance because slow and steady changes often remain unnoticed.
3.22 trillion tons of plastic wastes were produced in the year of 2015 all around the world. India alone produced more than 5.84 million tons of plastic wastes. If we analyze statistically, we will observe that the slope of the graph is gradually increasing. We already know that the plastics are non-biodegradable i.e. they cannot be decomposed or at least take 100-500 years to be degraded. Hence, every piece of plastic ever made on earth still exists. Starting from the toothbrushes we used, food wrappers we used – mobile covers, carry-bags, makeup kits, pens, remotes, clocks, water bottles everything still exist somewhere. The reported dreadful consequences include annual death of 1 million sea-birds and about 100,000 marine animals around the world. Very little of the total waste is incinerated. Even being a synthetic polymer, during incineration, it produces toxic oxides like sulfur-di-oxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide etc. which may cause severe respiratory problems like asthma, emphysema and even cause heart diseases.
Conservation law of mass states, mass cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved over time. We know that the space on earth is limited too and plastic is indestructible. Therefore, that day is not far away when the above-mentioned story will become true.  Thus, finding a serious solution is an urgent requirement and we have to find that NOW.
Paper bags can be an easy alternative, but then, the issue of indiscriminate deforestation is another headache. There are few substitutes like PLA or cellulose derived plastics but they are not much efficient. However, we can follow the “three R’s”- Recycle, Reuse and Refuse method to reduce the intensity of the pollution. We can try adopting simple habits like using jute bags or non-woven bags instead of poly-bags. We can take cotton bags from home while going for shopping.
We are rapidly becoming a plastic society. It’s not possible to change the entire world at once. That’s why, individual efforts do count. Changes need to be brought in at individual level. Some of us have to begin to use the possible solutions. This awareness will pass on to the family members and friends of these individuals. Finally, the society will learn from them.
One of the major sources of plastic is the industries (viz. food and pharma industry) which produce FMCG products that are consumed drastically. They use plastic as a cheap packing material. If we want to beat plastic pollution, we have to modify the industry policies. Government should sit with these industry-heads and specialized experts should be used to revolutionize the system so that we can lead to a plastic-free society.  
Extensive awareness is required in school-level. Slogans like “Save planet” are useless if we can’t make children understand it’s not the planet which will no more, it’s us – we will extinct.
Recently, scientists have found that waxworms can mineralize plastic materials. Overnight 100 waxworms can degrade up to 92gm of plastic. Even fungus like Aspergillus tubingensis and bacteria like Enterobacter asburiae can potentially degrade the polyethylene films although the rate of degradation is low. Scientists say that applying the concept of “Biomimicry” to mimic the mechanism of plastic degradation in these organisms, within fifty years they can develop an efficient plastic degradation technology. But till then, we have to stick to the options available to us.
I bet, Dr. Baekeland never imagined we will dive into a toxic love story with our self-created jungles of plastic while inventing durable polymer in 1907. In immunology, they say everything beyond a certain limit is poisonous. Plastic has crossed that line decades ago. Growth of cells is an essential part of development, but uncontrollable growth leads to cancer. We must act now to root out this poison, or else it will become the main ingredient of all our grand children’s recipes.