Yesterday, I bought an ice-cream on the way from school to home. It was the sundae type, in a pretty twisty cup. If you live in Bangladesh, you might know which one I'm talking about: Igloo's 35 Taka sundae cup. Almost whenever I buy ice-cream, half the time I buy this one. However, yesterday, I noticed something that I never really did before.

It was not until I returned home with my bounty, I realized I didn't just buy a cup of sundae; I also bought four pieces of plastic. Firstly, the weird looking cup. Secondly, the spoon to scoop up from the cup. Thirdly, the wrapper around the little spoon. Finally, the polythene bag where the Ice-cream seller packed up my sundae.  

And that's not even it. All of these plastic objects were just for one time use. Maybe my mum kept the polythene bag, I don't know. But the cup, spoon, the wrapper - all were thrown straight at the bin when I finished up my sundae.

I couldn't help but start to think about  similar situations. I was astonished to think about what truth I'd missed throughout my whole life, the truth right under my nose.

Take fizzy drinks for example. Those things do come in plastic bottles (they also come in aluminium cans, but most often, people buy the bottles, because they are less expensive. And there's not the can option when you buy a huge amount). I'm sure many of you like these drinks. Heck, even I am addicted to coca-cola. But recently, I saw a video depicting the CEO of coca-cola who tried to buff his way through when asked about the positive effects of coca-cola in our lives. These bubbly drinks don't just have no value in our lives - except quench our thirst in a much more, er, delicious way than plain, old water -, they also have harmful effects to our health. 

(I would have added the link to the video I mentioned above, but I saw it from my dad's Facebook account, and now I can't find any link. Sorry.)

And when we're done consuming the fizzy liquid, all the plastic bottles join the waste. This isn't specifically related to coca-cola, but not so recently, a group of aspiring youths took a mission and collected as many waste plastic bottles as they could and piled up 5 million of it - just from the city of Dhaka.

(This video was also seen from my dad' Facebook account. Seriously, why don't they ever post these things in Youtube ?)

Let's take the situation further. You're going to go crazy if you think about a fast food meal. The traditional fast food meal includes something like a burger, some fries, a cold drink. The wrapper around the burger, the container for your  drink, the packet for your fries, the plastic that keeps your ketchup - everything is freaking plastic.

There's another thing. Straws. Don't even get me started on straws. Have any of you seen the horrifying video of a couple of divers (or something like that) bringing out a single straw out of the nose of a turtle? There's the youtube link below.

(This link I can give you. Yippee!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH878t78bw

)

You will want to see this. In fact, you need to see this. Already thin, long, stretchy straws have begun their nasty work on our sea creatures. Do we need to wait to see another creature consume a burger wrapper to take actions?

I'm not saying we can eliminate the use of plastic in these vases straight away. There's a reason why burgers are wrapped around in plastic even inside the cardboard boxes. But it might be possible to eliminate the use of plastic bottles, especially in case of fizzy drinks. Sure, it might raise the costs, but we are at the stake of losing our home planet. It is true that the businessmen won't bother with saving the environment when their profit is concerned. So the government has to order a decree to eliminate plastic bottles. It may be possible then. Maybe.

Moreover, I think we can use cardboard wrappers for those one time use spoons we buy with the ice-creams, don't you think? 

Can anyone else come up with any other ideas? Because if we are to solve this problem, we need to work on this together.