Beat Plastic Pollution campaign lands in markets

But environmental regulator Environmental Management Agency (EMA) a year ago tried to bring some sanity into the plastics sector by banning kaylites, a popular packaging material in the food industry, to great resistance.

The national capital Delhi generates over 689 tonne of plastic waste in a day, followed by Chennai at 429.30 tonne and Mumbai at 408 tonnes.

The global community, last Tuesday, celebrated the World Environment Day, a day set aside by the United Nations in 1974, to draw attention to the need to protect and improve the human environment.

Prince Edward Island could be the first province in Canada to ban retailers from giving out plastic bags after a private member’s bill passed third reading Friday morning. Subscribe to the Standard Group SMS service by texting “NEWS” to 22840.

And, to compound these issues, we have the growing impacts of climate change.

Experts speaking at a seminar recently organised by the National Forum for Environment in Karachi emphasised the need to implement laws to penalize all those responsible for creating plastic waste and failing to safely dispose of it. He, however, termed the key to effectively enforcing the ban more of a public participation, urging wananchi to report violators at the county Nema offices. Plastic only ends up as waste if we fail to recognize and utilize it as a resource.

But the plastics in the bags do not biodegrade and can take many years to break down.

For 2018, the theme of Environment Day is “Fighting Plastic Pollution”.

The experts made the call at the World Environment Day Celebration, organised by Friends of the Environment (FOTE) in collaboration with the conservation club of the Federal Science and Technical College (FSTC), Yaba and the West African Seasoning Nigeria PLC and others in Lagos.

“The pollution is particularly high in the towns”. Animals can not break down plastic in their digestive system and will usually die from the obstruction.

Maundu Muli, an environmental governance expert at the Centre for Rural Economy, warns that this problem is bound to worsen. If business continues as usual, the ocean will contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025, and by 2050, the oceans may have more plastics than fish, by weight. However, he is optimistic that such a scenario could be averted through recycling. However, these measures to fall short of complete eradication of the problem of plastic pollution.

Environmental Defence, a Canadian advocacy organization, said it is was disappointed with the agreement’s plans for the handling of waste plastic.

-Store food without plastic containers: replace plastic films, bags and containers with glass, an inert material that, unlike plastic, does not release any contaminants.

According to her, the campaign needed the cooperation of all sections of society to strengthen awareness of the dangers of plastic waste.

“Our members have committed to aggressive goals and to doing their part to improve the recycling and recovery of post-use plastics packaging”, said Carol Hochu, President and CEO of CPIA. Data shows that globally 500 trillion plastic bags are being used annually.

Numerous marine conservation programmes operate in the coast, like one run by WWF.

Plastic is not an inherently good object, as it is composed of major toxic pollutants that have potential to cause great harm to the environment in the form of air, water and land pollution. Some of the constituents of plastic such as benzene are known to cause cancer and skin irritation in humans, he said.