(Image: A page from my son’s book Professor Astro Cat’s Solar System)
“Mumma, what am I made of?” my three-year-old asks me.
“Bones, muscles, fat and skin,” is the most technically accurate and no-further-question-inducing answer I can come up with. He then decides this is an interesting game.
From the sofa (wood, cloth, cardboard), to the curtains (cloth), to the table (wood), we need to know what everything in the house is made of. He finally gets bored when he digs into his toy-box and with great excitement pulls out his superhero figurines. Plastic. Plastic. Plastic. Yes, Hulk too is plastic. Pretty much the same material that your Thanos would be made of. No, that Captain American doesn’t have any special “vibranium” plastic.
That went downhill pretty quickly! He moves on to find some other game.
And leaves me silently pondering how much plastic we really consume in our lives. Of course, we have a good smattering of wooden toys in his collection, and a more than extensive book collection which is definitely not plastic. I’m also well aware that plastic by itself is not entirely evil. A lot of modern conveniences and technologies would be lost without plastics. Mobile phones, automotive and aerospace advancements, medical and household electronics, and various other consumer products rely on plastics. Without plastic, our reliance on other limited resources like wood or metals would supposedly be higher. There are industries employing hundreds of thousands of people that will very likely shut down if plastic use is eliminated or even reduced in our daily lives.
All this is known.
Yet, all this gets outweighed when you see the sheer destruction and decimation of the environment that the excessive and careless use of plastic has caused. Whether or not Nature itself “knows” what’s best, humans surely can see what they are doing to the environment. Can’t we?
(Image from our stay at Kovalam, Kerela 2017; Quote from his speech at the Climate Summit Speech 2015)
You use plastic straws for drinks or even water at restaurants, until you watch a documentary about how single-use straws are not recycled and actually kill or maim thousands of your child’s favourite sea turtles and seahorses. You pause to think. Perhaps reusable straws are a better idea.
You ask your vegetable vendor to separately pack each half-kg of fruits and veggies that you buy, until you see a friend posting about a weekend clean-up drive which is uncovering tonnes and tonnes of buried plastic, from the seaside where your child loves building sand-castles. Perhaps a cloth bag is a better idea.
You delight in the joy your child gets from the bursting the bubble-wrap that comes with your Amazon deliveries, until you see pictures of young children playing on mountains of landfills which have taken over any semblance of open grounds. Perhaps that one shampoo bottle didn’t need a 4-metre long protective wrap.
This weekend, a monumental step was taken in restoring the balance, in one state of the country. The Maharashtra Government has taken the first step in the effort to reduce non-biodegradable plastic waste. Single-use non-recyclable plastics are now banned across the state. That means no manufacture, no storage, no wholesale and retail sale of single-use non-recyclable plastic and thermocol items. You can read about exactly what is allowed and not allowed in this comprehensive article in The Indian Express. As of today, Maharashtra apparently produces more than 1,200 tonnes of plastic waste daily.That’s the equivalent of more than 230 adult Asian elephants, every single day. Most of it filling up landfills, clogging drains and the sea. What a legacy to leave our kids right?! Floating islands of plastic waste.
Now imagine, the impact that the Maharashtra Plastic Ban can have. Once the market-goers’ scurry to procure cloth reusable bags settles down, and after the restauranteurs figure out the solution to their takeaway woes, of course. The ban is on products that are actually harmful to our ecosystems. It has been implemented over the course of months (giving people time to find suitable replacements), and it is across the state. No special status to anyone or any region.
We’ll all find ways to live our lives, with reduced use of harmful single-use plastics. Don’t you think Mother Nature deserves that much of a “sacrifice” from us?
And while the increased environmental awareness in today’s time is definitely needed, I can’t help but wonder why we need to wait for government machinery to tell us what is good or bad. If plastics are banned in Maharashtra, why can’t people living elsewhere implement similar steps willingly as well? Our environment is being massacred, it’s time we really stop turning a blind eye and make serious attempts to save what we have destroyed. Whether as a parent or even as a regular concerned citizen, we all need to be more mindful of ways in which we can improve the world that our children will grow up in. Every step we take to reduce our carbon footprint, no matter how small, is a step worth taking.
I shudder to think that we are getting closer to that day when my son will ask, “Mumma, what is our planet made of?”
And the only technically correct answer I’ll have to give him is “Mostly garbage.”
This post is published for #OpenNTalk Blogger’s League hosted by @Gleefulblogger & @Wigglingpen in association with SummerBarn, Vedantika Herbals, Nyassa, and Explore Kids World.
This week, my team #NISSAtalks is writing on #NatureKnowsBest.
Team N.I.S.S.A. talks:
Nupur (that’s me!)
Ishieta (www.isheeriashealingcircles.com),
Sudha (www.sukrisblog.wordpress.com),
Silja (www.vijvihaar.wordpress.com) and
Arvind (www.passey.info).
