Page 21 - Plastics News November 2018

AipmA At work

Plastic in Ocean – Let’s not exaggerate it

Now-a-days criticizing Plastics is in vogue and its catching up across the society, the one who doesn’t criticize it, is
looked down upon. It’s a pity.

Recently, National Geography, did a cover story on Plastic in Ocean giving a full dose of ‘gyaan’ on Plastics in ocean
and how it is harmful. It noted in the story that the number of plastic fragments will be more than number of fishes
in Sea by 2050.
Interestingly the Magazine was packed (for courier) in a Plastic bag !

Now as the story claimed of higher amount of plastics than fishes in future, in reality there are too many assumptions
done to arrive at such shocking Headlines. There is another prediction I have seen, with the current level of fishing,
by 2050 there may hardly be any fish left in ocean.
Let’s make it clear. Plastic does not walk into ocean.

In Mumbai nearly 50% population lives in slums. Added to the fact, that the by-lanes of slums are too narrow for
municipality garbage vans to enter and collect the waste. Slum dwellers use plastic bag to collect all household garbage
and dump it into nearest nallahs, which ultimately flows to ocean. Due to oceanic wave action Plastic bag is torn and
reaches the shore and / or the beach.

One needs to have corrective measures in places. If municipality uses smaller and perhaps narrower vehicle to collect
garbage from door to door across slums in the city, the amount of Plastic in ocean will reduce considerably.

Building floating trash booms on all nallahs, river and beaches will make it easier to collect floating waste. Bombay
Municipality Corporation has fixed deposits of 50000 Crore rupees. But they are not held accountable for faulty waste
management that leads to damaging environmental conditions.
There are many other things that enter into ocean. - Around 239 Billion litres of untreated sewerage goes into ocean
in Mumbai alone, every year and for this BMC is not held responsible.
2.5 billion tons of carbon generated due to fossil fuels and industry gets dissolved into oceans making it more acidic.
It affects all marine life.
All pharma products which leave our body enters ocean and ultimately reach drinking water. It makes bacteria resistant
to antibiotics and that killed 700000 people last year.
Huge amount of construction debris is dumped into sea and it sinks it’s a known fact.
Just because Plastic floats it is visible and all other trash goes unnoticed. Nobody is bothered about it. Just because
one does not look at it (other Solid waste) does not mean it doesn’t exists, rest all are known to scientist. But these
things are not in public domain and so it does not attract any so called Public-action.
Environment ministry has not taken any visible or effective action in any of above issues and surprisingly they are still
not held accountable for the mess.
Entire force and focus is on banning plastic and using government machinery to spread fear, bringing back memories
of inspector Raj. Environment is just an excuse.
Let’s not exaggerate.. Let’s get facts right.
Plastics is a wonder material. It’s Municipalities who need to improve their waste management systems. Start waste
segregation and material recovery facilities

Jayesh Rambhia
Past President & Co Chairman Environment Committee – AIPMA

21 November 2018 Plastics News