Plastics - Boon or Bane
Its not something new and its not something we hardly find - its something we find at every corner of our mother earth, nit only earth we haven't left even the oceans now.
Cattle eats them, sea animals get stuck, human beings inhale them when burnt and at the end it kills us all. Am not talking about anything new here nor am i going to tell something which none of us know, my intention is i just want us to rethink i just want us to actually THINK.
From our birth till we die we learn a lot, we become a better person, we grow physically, mentally, we earn money, we have big houses we feel we have done enough for us and for the generations to come. What are we - We are a happy man.
But have we stopped a while running this race to see where are we going ?, Have we done enough ? We might have done enough limiting it to ourselves but slowly we are unknowingly depleting the most important resource who we even call our MOTHER thats our planet earth. And now the mother needs shoulder of her children to even breathe and even now if we dont stand to support her to let her stand if not run then she will die.
Trust me its not far, the end is near if we dont change what we should have years ago.
Its not that one should apply a huge effort or some great force to make things go from where they are now to where they should be.
Earth looks very different if i personally compare to what it used to looks a decade back. Those banyan trees, the hanging roots which we used to hang on when we were a kid are now a rare sight, sparrows who used to be all around us are now gone, those parks those fields those grounds where we used to play most of them are now complexes or societies.
Things have changed maybe for monetarily good but if we look from a larger extent then they have just went bad to worse.
We dont plant a tree, we dont purify any water but we always demand to have mineral water, we want to stand under a tree when its hot, we need clean air to breathe and if I ask what are we doing to make that happen then most of us will not have any answer.
Every individual thinks that will if i plant a tree? what if i use paper bag ? what if i do rain water harvesting ? no one else will and the efforts will go in vain. But every small step we take leads us to a better tomorrow. We have money we feel why to take a bus or pool in someone's car when i can afford my own car and goto work in a way which is most luxurious.
On an average in a city if an office has 500 employees 10% of them will have cars thats 50 cars and at least 40-50% will have their own two wheelers thats 200-250 two wheelers. Just think what if we car pooled or shared someone's bike the most important problem TRAFFIC would have been solved right away and pollution which is thus a problem would have been reduced to a great extent. Am not saying that go and do this but i am saying just think if we can do this or not.
In other countries where even prime minister uses a bicycle to goto work, here we are not bothered at all and we have forgotten that bicycles do exist - why dont we try using them.
A car runs on money and makes you fat and a bicycle runs on fat and saves your money.
India has a population of about 1.3 billion what if even 1 percent of our population planted a tree years back where atleast 10% of population is responsible in cutting trees which we never helped in growing.
It takes no time to destroy a natural resource but it takes years for it to come when they become even significant to us.
Its a never ending topic and i dont have words to express what i really feel, but out of all this i will pick which i feel is alarming to us now and that is PLASTIC.
Plastic first appeared by the hands of English inventor Alexander Parks in 1850. Since then whatever plastic which is produced hasnt decomposed and it still exists. So plastic bags which our grandfathers used still lies not decomposed on some corner of planet earth making life difficult for someone or the other as once used we wont even look or think of using it again.
So again i will ask is plastic a boon or a bane ?
how difficult is it for us to take our own shopping bags when we go to a mall, how difficult is it to advice the same to others even.
Just imagine when we go and shop which is like atleast twice a month and we come back with 6-8 huge plastic bags we use whats inside them and we throw those bags we use them to collect trash in a dustbin and then it goes somewhere from where it never comes back thats a dumpyard and from a dumpyard it goes to ocean.
My question is to all the e-commerce websites even let it be AMAZON, FLIPKART, JABONG, MYNTRA etc. These giants ship millions of orders each day collectively how difficult is it for them to totally eradicate plastic covers and ship them in carton boxes.
It takes just a moment before stepping out of house to carry a cloth bag along and avoid all plastic bags which we would have ended up carrying home on the way back. Problem wont solve if one person thinks that he can it will solve when we together stand and decide that we should.
Measures are pretty easy carry cloth bags, not to throw trash on public places using dustbins judiciously, using paper bags and i am not asking something which is very difficult i am asking something which hardly takes any effort.
Each plastic we use contributes to that huge bed of plastics floating on oceans which ends up killing sea animals. We are most intelligent among all species that doesnt mean we are authorized to destroy their habitat.
Its high time its now or never, we have started seeing effects of our ill deeds. Antarctica is melting three times faster than it used to a decade ago. We face droughts and we face floods, every common man feels its getting hotter as compared to the last year. Global temperature has rise of 2 degrees in the last century.
Ocean is covered, huge chunk of land is covered by this thing which we once use and throw and it never decomposes, i am not asking anything big i am not asking anything which is beyond our reach.
Please think please avoid plastics, the species who are not as developed as we are who cant speak who cant express their feelings who cannot help themselves when they face this demon.....
They are all dying silently.
This doesnt limit to land or water or the sky. It hunts us everywhere.
If we cant make things better then at least now we should refrain from contributing in the destruction. I urge you to wake up, i urge you to rise. If you cannot clean the beaches which when you visit them then atleast stop yourself from making them worse.
What we do is we just complain we have thousands of complaints we say government is poor, policies are poor. GHMC isnt doing its work properly. But are we true to ourselves are we doing out part. We just claim for our Fundamental rights but we never care about our Fundamental Duties thats sad to me thats really sad.
If each individual decides that he can and he will get this change then i challenge you within no time we can collectively solve this which is haunting each one of us.
Just do your part carry cloth bags, clean your localities if you can educate others spread the word. Earth was gifted to mankind as a paradise and its high time that we should get back what we once had.
Do your part, start thinking, help each other and stand for whats right. Its not difficult.
