Gar(bage)den City

In 1998 when I first came to Bangalore the city was indeed a heaven with lots of trees, cool winds (could barely think of a day when I went out without a jacket) and of course… no traffic jams. Now in 2007 after about 8 years, it’s a completely different picture. I don’t wear a jacket unless it rains, it takes 20-25 mins for me to reach my office which is 4km away from home, whether it’s a crooked vegetable guy or the nuisance of honking horns at Red light… this city is driving me mad and I take the equal responsibility of making this city such a mess. And one of the biggest problem is Garbage.

For me who basically hails from kerala, it was a rare sight that people doing their “morning rituals” in the streets itself when I first came to Bangalore. But as more and more sanitary facilities coming up I felt this particular issue is presently under control.

I’d been to Kerala recently for a short visit and I was just wondering at the sight of the parallel tracks of endless bunch of plastic carry bags next to the railway tracks!. It was no exception in the so called “Clean” state of Kerala too. One might argue that I am exaggerating this issue, but clearly this is one of the biggest threat to the environment and these plastic materials can flood a city like Mumbai as we have witnessed few months back.

80 percent of groceries are packed in plastic bags and as per national geographic, consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags per year worldwide. Plastic bags can be found in landfills, stuck on trees, and floating in the ocean. Below is the excerpt from their article.

Plastic bags can take hundreds of years to break down. As they break down, they release poisonous materials into the water and soil.

Plastic bags in the ocean can choke and strangle wildlife. Endangered sea turtles eat the bags and often choke on them—probably because the bags look like jellyfish, the main food of many sea turtles. In fact, floating plastic bags have been spotted as far north as the Arctic Ocean to as far south as the southern end of South. One expert predicts that within ten years, plastic bags will wash up in Antarctica. So its just not that we Bangaloreans face this issue. This is an issue which will affect the entire course of this cute little world of us.

So what do we do about it? Can we really live without plastic bags? The answer for the second question is NO. Unless and otherwise a new material which can replace plastic is invented we have to bear with it as plastic is widely used in most of the industries especially medical field. Whether it’s the blood bag or medicine bottles… things will not move without plastic.

My answer to the first question is to have a smart way to reduce the use of plastic bags and recycle it properly. We can do a lot in the first part if not much in the last part of the above said. Why do you need a plastic carry bag to put you half litter milk packet which you bought from the nearby store? Why don’t you try to re-use the plastic bags when you go for purchasing? It’s sad that most of our shopping malls don’t allow the customers to take a carry bag along with them! Why don’t you collect your waste in the carry bag and pass it on to the garbage wala? If none of the above sounds feasible for you, at least don’t throw these covers everywhere.

It looks so silly that the so called silicon valley of India is flooded with plastic bags everywhere. This is surely one of the biggest challenges the modern worlds faces and let’s try to make difference to it.