Friday 9.00 AM-9:05 AM- 14th Jan,2011
Today is the first day celebration of the “Visit Nepal Year 2011”. Everyone is attracted to the celebration events going on at Dashrath stadium. But I decided to have a look at the preparation of the local people here. So here is what I saw.
Aason is busy as usual. Some people are moving to their office carrying their office bag, I couldn’t see many a students, because there is a public holiday for the celebration. Many people are busy on shopping, especially on vegetables shopping.
Plastic Bag!!!
Almost all people who were purchasing vegetables, were using plastic bag to carry the vegetables back to their home. Those who were buying kitchen items, incense, cosmetics, spices etc were also carrying plastic bag. So it seemed as if plastic bag is compulsory for shopping.
What I Inferred
From the 5 min view of the habit of people, I came to conclude that plastic bag has became an integral part of our shopping habit.
Why is this a harmful habit
Compared to other substances like glass and metal; plastic has a very limited and of course lengthy process for recycling. Plastic bags are not bio-degradable, means they don’t decompose in the soil. However there are a number of other ways that plastic can be processed. But the problem is that plastic bag also contains additional materials apart from plastic polymers; like dye. The manufacturers often use these type of materials so that the production cost of plastic goes down dramatically.
So, processing plastic becomes a very expensive process. Of course there are also cheap methods for plastic processing, but they tend to produce a lot of environmental hazards. In short, using plastic is very easy but disposing it is a great challenge.
What now
Of course I won’t recommend the ban in plastic bag. There are a lot of recent developments in the plastic industry that makes plastic bag environment friendly, but they are much expensive.
So the best solution would be to limit the use of plastic. It would be extremely good if we could remove the habit of “plastic shopping”. However for now, here are some simple tips we could follow:
1> There might be some old shopping bag in our home just lying there to be thrown; made up of jute or fabric or other materials other than plastic polymer. If we got one, then why not carry them for carrying vegetables?
2> We should avoid using plastic when there is a cheap alternative. Suppose there are paper and plastic packaging of a same product, you could opt paper package rather than plastic, given the cost has a minimal variation.
3> Even if we don’t have alternative bag at home, there could be some plastic bag lying somewhere. We could carry that for our shopping, until the bag is torn. That way we could re-use the same plastic bag again and again.
4> Ok, lets say we don’t have any bag with us but has to purchase many things right now. So what we could do is, use a single bag for carrying many items, as far as the bag can handle.
5> And remember, the torn bags can be recycled in other forms as well, like making dolls out of it, and so on…
6> And not to forget the ultimate solution, to discard the plastic bag forever.
Why is this important
The culture and civilization of a place is reflected through the habit and thinking of the people living there. The utmost problem that almost all the cities of Nepal is facing are – road management and garbage management. I would write about the road (traffic) management some other day. But for the time being, lets consider the wastage.
The everyday garbage of Kathmandu consists of about 60% kitchen wastages (degradable), 20% plastic items and remaining are rest of the materials. So what we can do is, use the degradable (kitchen waste) for compost manure inside our home and minimize the plastic waste. If we could only manage to do these 2 things, we would not be hearing budget allocation on waste management anymore in near future. Can you imagine how would the city look then?
Lets promote the Visit Nepal 2011 Year
We are welcoming 10 lakhs tourist this year. Are they coming here to see the “wastage mountains”? Are we calling this event the “Dumping site tourism?” No…
Lets not forget that 10 lakh people are coming to see us, to see our culture, our thinking, our tradition and of course our environment and nature. So we should not let go this golden opportunity from our hand. Lets make our home clean, our society cleaner and our environment safe.
So, the next time you are going to shop, keep your environment in mind………………..
-Ramesh Parajuli
