Plastic Sense

Seram Neken *

Rag pickers sorting out plastic items for resale - Picture by Hueiyen News Service

"Civic regulations in Manipur are always short-lived. Traffic rules are strictly enforced only during observances of road safety weeks, while helmet-use drives by state police could not be practically implemented for long. Senseless vehicles are always seen parked at no-parking labeled roadsides in the city. Important persons and security-men are often on the lead to break traffic rules. Liquors are openly sold in the city and in almost all localities, as if 'dry-state' status has been removed from Manipur. It is not clear whether 'Ban on Smoking' is still alive in the state now. Many a zero-garbage regulations have been announced recently, but no clear enforcement is seen. Will it be effective to ban plastics use in Manipur again ?"

Use of bottled water and disposable containers has become widespread and compulsory in almost all social and religious gatherings in Manipur. The wastes bottles and containers are randomly thrown out, ignoring the potential dangers of plastics pollution. Awareness on the hazards of plastics and its careful management should be widely spread to the people, besides banning the use of plastics in statute. Civic sense is the pre-requisite for successful implementation of all societal regulations.

Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 replacing the earlier Recycled Plastics Manufacture and Usage Rules has been notified. Some of the salient features of the new Rules are:

• ban on use of plastic materials in sachets for storing,
• packing or selling gutkha, tobacco and pan masala;
• no food stuffs will be allowed to be packed in recycled plastics or compostable plastics;
• recycled carry bags to have specific BIS standards,
• colour to the prescription by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS);
• uniform thickness shall not be less than 40 microns in carry bags
• etc.

Under the rules, the concerned Municipal authority is responsible for setting up, operationalisation and coordination of the waste management system and for performing the associated functions like ensuring safe collection, storage, segregation, transportation, processing and disposal of plastic wastes.

The main objectives are: no damage to the environment during this process, setting up of the collection centers for plastic waste involving manufacturers, its channelization to recyclers, to create awareness among all stakeholders about their responsibilities, and to ensure that open burning of plastic waste is not permitted.

Plastics are synthetic substances produced by chemical reactions. Almost all plastics are made from petroleum, except a few experimental resins derived from corn and other organic substances. Plastic has many properties which make it a raw material of choice for manufactures of Bags and packing materials.

Cost of production, light weight, strength, easy process of manufacture and availability are few of the properties. There is nothing wrong to use plastic as a material. Simply, man has not put the plastics to the right and careful use.

Before the advent of poly-bags, people did shopping with cloth bags for lighter items, gunny bags or Jute bags for voluminous and heavier goods. These bags were washable and reusable lasting for six months to a year. Plastic has replaced the traditional material like paper and cloth as packing and carry bags because of cost and convenience which is possibly a wrong choice of material for such use.

Even though plastic bags can preserve food and can be used for growing vegetables in a controlled environment, their method of disposal has created unprecedented pollution problem. Plastic has many more uses other than Plastic Bags and Packing material. It is used for manufacturing of protective covers and parts for many machines, which is the preferred utility for plastic.

Plastics pose are numerous hazards. The land gets littered by plastic bag garbage presenting an ugly and unhygienic seen. Random throwing of plastic materials results in blocking drainage system and spreads of water borne diseases. This littering also reduces rate of rain water percolating, resulting in lowering of already low water levels in our cities.

The soil fertility deteriorates as the plastic bags form part of manure remains in the soil for years. It is also observed that the animals eating the bags sometimes die. Fish and other marine species in the water ways, misunderstanding plastic garbage as food items, swallow them and die.

In the Manipur situation, we may follow the following steps to reverse the tide of toxic, non-biodegradable pollution by plastics:

1. We need to always carry our own fibred or clothed bags during shopping so that we may not accept plastic bags from the shops.
2. We need to buy beverages in sustainable and non-plastic reusable containers as much as possible.
3. We need to always take drinking water from the tap, if possible. The use of packaged water and disposable containers during feast programmes shall be avoided. Instead we can use glass or steel containers for distributing water, as was widely done earlier.
4. Pens that re-fill ink may be used instead of one-time use pens.
5. Plastic wastes materials shall not be thrown at random. They are to be gathered and disposed for recycling wherever it is possible. Burning shall not be done at all.

We need to change a little in our lifestyles so that global problem of environmental pollution due to plastics is controlled. It is the responsibility of all and sundry to put plastics to the right use and right disposal.

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* Seram Neken wrote this article for Hueiyen Lanpao (English Edition)
The writer is a freelance journalist
This article was webcasted on June 15, 2011.

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