By Komal Zehra
Plastic is harmful to our environment How knowledgeable do you believe about changes to the environment? Hendrik Baekeland produced the first synthetic plastic in 1907 and he probably had no idea what influence his creation would have on the globe and its inhabitants. Plastic has altered how we live, purchase, and consume. Plastic is inescapable in today’s world. Plastic is everywhere.
The plastic we use without thinking every day, the plastic we toss away without a second thought, it lives on and on in virtually everything we use, including our automobiles, technological products, furniture, clothing, food, and dental sealants! It’s nice out here that it is destroying our earth, sea life, and, slowly but steadily, us. Plastic bags, like other plastics, are manufactured from crude oil. This is an issue since crude oil generates considerable amounts of pollutants and is not biodegradable.
Many people believe that paper bags are a good alternative.
However, this is not true because they still have a detrimental impact on the environment. Reusable bags are the most incredible alternative to disposable bags.
Toxic toxins from plastic pollution affect humans, animals, and plants. Plastic may degrade over hundreds, if not thousands, of years, creating long-term environmental harm.It has an impact on all creatures in the food chain, from plankton to whales.
Toxins go up the food chain when plastic is consumed and can even be found in the fish people eat.
Pakistan does not rank among the top five plastic waste-producing countries, including China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
However, due to fast urbanization, a growing population, and increased consumerism, we are dumping an alarming quantity of plastic garbage onto our land and rivers that flow into the Arabian Sea.
According to a conservative estimate from the Environmental Protection Agency, Pakistanis consume around 55 billion throwaway plastic bags every year.
All this excludes single-use cutlery, crockery, and packing material.
According to WWF, Pakistan has the second-largest domestic market for plastics in Southeast Asia after India, with a growth rate of 15 percent per annum.
At the same time, it has confined resources and an even more weak waste management system in place to cater to the growing amount of plastic and the municipal waste being generated.
As every drops counts, we should try not to use plastic bags and keep cloth bags with us to carry our clothes, pottery, and other things.
We must adopt environment-friendly techniques to keep our country clean and green.An overlooked issue is the selling of plastic bags according to product weight rather than quantity.
Due to cheap raw materials, Pakistan’s plastic bags are cheap and sufficiently open to retailers in packaging according to weight.In Pakistan, a ban on single-use plastics will need a deliberate and continuous government effort.
The government must take a firm stance on making alternatives available to individuals who work in the manufacture and retail of single-use plastics. The implementation of bans needs to be practical.
There must be a more significant commitment and action from them than corporate social efforts, which increase sales. The Sindh, Punjab, and KP governments banned the usage of plastic bags in the past, but we could not see any implementation in this regard. Regular monitoring from the authorities would be helpful to implement this act.
With the current government’s emphasis on the environment, one hopes that meaningful policy and action will be implemented shortly. But, as the environmental clock ticks away, we are running out of time.”Protecting your environment is not a choice; it’s a necessity.”