Years To Collapse, Though The Complex Ones Take Between 100 and 600 Years or Even Beyond

According to the United Nations Environment Program,
 Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags,

 Yearly, at least eight million tons of plastic end up in the oceans, the equivalent of a full
garbage truck every minute.
 In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century.
 50 percent of the plastic we use is single-use or disposable.
 We buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute.
 Plastic makes up 10% of all of the waste we generate.
 Only 14% of total plastic used the world over is brought back for recycling, rest is
disposed of into oceans and soil.
 In the time it takes pacer Muhammad Amir to bowl an over, four trucks of plastic waste
are dumped in the ocean.
An additive known as Bisphenol (BPA) is used to make plastic more supple, durable and
transparent. At high or very low temperatures, this chemical leaches into the food, water, and
other eatables in PET bottles and other containers usually stored in freezers and sometimes
exposed to high temperatures in microwave ovens. There is a potential danger of these chemicals
entering the cellular structure of our bodies and causing cancers and threatening the endocrine
system.
Our government needs to consider strategies such as imposing a bag tax, which has proved to
be very effective in other countries. For example, after a five-cents bag tax was imposed in
Washington, DC, usage fell by an estimated 86pc. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t have
similar results in Pakistan.
It is shocking to know that the simplest plastic normally used in grocery store bags take over 100
years to collapse, though the complex ones take between 100 and 600 years or even beyond
that to decompose.
In Pakistan, each year, 30 million tons of solid waste is produced, out of which nine percent are
plastics. Here, 55 billion plastic bags a year are produced. These single-use non-biodegradable
bags mostly find their way to open garbage dumps, landfill sites or municipal sewers, thus
making sewage disposal systems less efficient by choking, thus adding to the costs of utility
operations.
Current urban waste management practices are partners to this crisis, since they only focus on
picking waste from communal bins and disposing of it in urban fringes without segregation,
material recovery or recycling, and also by not making communities act responsibly. They are
spending as much as Rs. 3000-6000 per ton without any business model to recover costs. On
another serious aside, a colossal amount of these bags is often being directly burnt, adding most
hazardous exhaust gases like Dioxins and Furans to the ambient air.
It is estimated that food wrappers and containers produce 31.15% of pollution in the
environment. Bottles and containers cap produce 15.5% of pollution in the environment.
Plastic bags cause 11.18% environmental pollution, straw and stirrers produce 8.13%, beverage
bottles cause 7.27% pollution in the environment.
The issue of plastic pollution along Pakistan’s coast is worsening due to an inadequate solid
waste disposal system in the city, KU Institute of Environmental Science Director Professor
Omme Hany said.
Our country is facing an escalating plastic bag pollution crisis. A recent survey by the Pakistan
Environmental Protection Agency found that about 55 billion bags are currently being used,
and is expected to increase yearly by 15 per cent.
With no alternative that is 100pc eco-friendly, the most impactful approach is to maximise our
reuse of shopping bags, be they made of thick plastic or cloth. That is what people used to do
before the advent of single-use shopping bags, so going back to this eco-friendly habit shouldn’t
be too herculean a task. On our part, we need to get used to taking our reusable bags with us
when we go shopping.
According to WWF-Pakistan, “65 percent of garbage that litter beaches along Pakistan’s
coast consists of Plastics. Only small fraction of garbage is burnt, which has its own
consequences but garbage that reaches the ocean consists mainly of non-degradable plastics that
is rapidly destroying marine habitats.”
-
First of all, single-use plastic bags such as shopper, water bottles, utensils and straws are of the
chief causes behind the rapid increase in plastic pollution. Thus, 3R (Recycle, Reuse and
Reduce) formula must be applied in this regard as it will help reduce new plastic production.
Whereas, ban on plastic bags should be enforced. This initiative will truly prove to be effective
in countering one of the causes of plastic overuse. In addition, plastic waste management
practices must be improved in an efficient manner.
This looming crisis can only be tackled through collaborative efforts by industry, government,
researchers and the end-users. Users must be made to understand the gravity of this looming
issue and urged to buy, use and dispose of plastics responsibly. The role of local councils is
really important in enforcing and devising plastic use and disposal related regulations (related to
manufacturing, after-use recovery, and disposal), and by augmenting a holistic waste
management solution encompassing segregation/recovery facilities to substitute current abysmal
waste management practices.
“I am concerned about the air we breathe and the water we drink. If overfishing continues, if
pollution continues, many of the species will disappear off the face of the earth.” -Bernard
Marcus.

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According to the United Nations Environment Program,

 Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags,

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