January 25, 2011

life in general: say no to plastic

We are living a plastic life. From what we eat or drink to what we wear we stand engulfed in a vast ocean of plastic material. And, most of it, particularly that used in our eating and drinking habits, is use-once-and-throw. No decent bit of recycling ever happens of of the plastic and thermocol cups, glasses and plates or tin cans we use and throw as if it was our birthright to do so.

In countries such as ours quite a bit of these even get burned as trash to avoid having to transport it to a garbage dump. Anyone bothered that these release highly toxic chemicals in the air? "We are not doing the burning!" is what one might hear from offended people who clearly have lost sight of their mindless consumption habits that have caused it.

Un-burnt plastic items that do find their way to the dump are piling up and even as natural mountains are becoming small due to mining and quarrying activity we see mountains of plastic and other materials to do not decompose for hundreds years.

It is astonishing that so many well-educated consumers, having access to every kind of information on their finger tips (internet, mobile phones, books etc), fail miserably to take steps, at least a few if not all, to bring down the use of plastic in their daily lives.

To give just one example: how much really would it take for high-heeled corporate world officers and professionals to keep a non-plastic glass and a cup on their desks which they use to drink water and tea or coffee? Why do they think they do no wrong in using a new plastic glass or cup every time they want to drink water or tea?

How much difficult is it really for us to re-use plastic bags in the next round of shopping, atleast 3-4 out of every 10 times? Every effort is required today to reduce the pain we are causing our Mother Earth every day of our life.

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