Bangkok’s sewer cleaners have it far better than those in India, despite the former being mostly prisoners who do the dirty work, literally, and get commuted sentences based on the amount of work they do. India’s sewer cleaners end up suffering from ill health
because of the filth that their bodies are exposed to. Today, drains are clogged even more than normal because of the abundance of plastic waste. Take Bangkok for example. The city has been suffering from floods for years now with the main reason being clogged drains due to plastic waste. Thailand is one of the top five consumers of plastic in the world. On an average, Thais use around eight plastic bags a day. In
contrast, someone in France uses around 80 a year. In Bangkok,
this results in serious trouble, especially considering the
fact that the city lies just 50 centimeters above sea level. In India,
the number of plastic bags used per person per day will be
closer to Thailand’s figures than France’s.
India is no stranger to disasters
due to plastic waste clogging up
drains. Mumbai and Kolkata, for
instance, have both experienced
floods for this very reason. But the
plastic waste keeps piling up. Take
Goa for example. Nearer the coastal
belt, the borders of most unused
swathes of land, the little streams
and rivulets and even clusters of
trees on the beach are filled with
piles of garbage, and plastic waste
makes up a substantial part of it.
Most food and beverage establishments
serve water by the bottle, many even do the same for
aerated beverages. Takeaway orders and parcels are packed
in plastic bags and all market vendors use them liberally too.
Even increasing the micron thickness of these bags doesn’t
change the fact that they are a problem and are not reused
as often as they should be. Goa produces almost 500 metric
tonnes of solid waste per day; plastic waste makes up around
12 to 15 percent of that amount. There are no recycling programmes
as such in Goa as yet, which means that over 50
tonnes of plastic waste is discarded every day.
While supermarkets in Goa and India, as well as other establishments
in urban areas, have now started to charge for plastic
or switch to cloth and paper bags, but this is still only a very
small percentage of the Indian population that is getting wary
of plastic use. Perhaps, the only solution is to have a blanket
ban on the use of plastic but when will that happen, and will
it just be too late? Bans don’t always work that well. Recycling
and spreading more awareness is necessary.
