ON A long drive recently from the capital city to a city in Punjab one could not help but be overwhelmed by the sight that assaulted ones senses. Having driven this way ever since childhood one had fond memories of lush green fields and scenes of the minutiae of daily life of the rural folk as they go about their daily chores.
The recent drive was, however, undertaken after a very long time and it was difficult not to notice the changes. The roads are much better, the road signs have more visibility, there seems to be more prosperity amongst the people but there is also that curse of modern living, everywhere.
Yes, I am talking of the ubiquitous plastic bags. For kilometer after kilometer one watched vast open spaces with eerie shapes waving about in it. At times it felt as though one was watching a scene from a movie about apocalypse and after. These are some of the millions of plastic bags we use on a daily basis. We use plastic bags and discard without a second thought about where these go eventually. Plastic, as we all know by now, is not biodegradable so what happens to these wispy thin plastic bags without which we can no longer visualise carrying on our daily lives?
Well, to find out take a drive and see these blowing across open spaces and see these entangled in fences and electric lines. They flutter, like the tattered flags of a defeated army, from bushes, trees, TV antennae and anything else these can get entangled in. Take a look at the canals that come on the way and see the bags entangled in the waterweeds along the banks. These bags choke the waterways and the drains. You can see these amongst the piles of rubbish that dot our urban and rural landscapes. This is where our cattle and other animals ingest these while foraging for food and then die a slow painful death. The same fate befalls the marine species. In fact so wide spread is the menace of plastic that camels die after ingesting them in the unforgiving deserts of Arabia, cows die on our streets and already endangered species die in our oceans worldwide.
The issue of the pollution of our environment can seem overwhelming to most of us but giving up hope and not taking any action is not an option any longer. The planet is warming up, its water bodies and spaces are turning into a rubbish dump and it will take a lot of foot soldiers to turn things around. Let us be those foot soldiers.
One way to make a small but important contribution is to say ‘No’ to plastic. If each and every one of us could make the shift from using plastic bags to using bags made of bio-degradable bags or better still re-usable bags then the effect could be tremendous. Ten people saying no to ten plastic bags when doing their grocery shopping at one of the supermarket means 100 bags prevented from invading our environment.
In many countries the supermarkets charge a small surcharge for every plastic bag that the customer requests. This should work wonderfully in our country as Indians by nature are prudent spenders would not want to pay each time they use a plastic bag. The supermarkets also sell bags made of jute that the customer can buy and reuse every time they shop. These bags also serve as free advertising space for the supermarket as hundreds of shoppers carry them around the cities and towns. In fact the supermarkets compete with one another to reduce the use of plastic. They post weekly or monthly figures outside their stores and customers get satisfaction from patronising stores that use the least plastic.
This brings one to the subject of the Jhola. In India, we have till very recently, used these reusable cloth bags to carry our shopping. So why did we give up this wonderful practice to pick up environmentally destructive practice of using plastic bags? Surely, the convenience that plastic provides is a deceptive advantage if we take into account the price we pay in terms of environmental damage? It is time now to reclaim the Jhola and restore it to its place of pride. India needs to relearn its earlier practices of reduce, reuse, recycle. Keeping a few bags in ones car or scooter is not such difficult thing after all. For our younger generation we need to make the Jhola cool. It should become a statement of ones environment friendly credentials to be seen carrying these bags. Make them cool, give them some ishtyle and the young will surely embrace them. If Sharukh Khan were to be seen carrying one then that would ensure that at least half of India adopts the habit!
Some bookshops and high-end shops already provide bags made from recycled paper to its customers. We need to take this further so that using these bags becomes a matter of pride. So, go on do your bit and say ‘No’ the next time you are offered a plastic bag.
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