Steps against plastic pollution
ABOUT two years ago, a groundbreaking initiative was launched in Morocco. Called Zero Mika, the initiative announced a ban on plastic bags. The ban did not apply to all plastic bags. Those used to gather household trash and agricultural and industrial products, as well as isothermal bags for maintaining medicine and other medical supplies at certain temperatures, were exempted from the ban.
The ban did, however, apply to the largest contributor of plastic bag pollution — bags used for carrying groceries and other purchased items. In short, bags that are easily and unthinkingly discarded on the streets.
The Zero Mika (zero plastic) law implemented by Morocco aims to reduce the polluting effects of the many tonnes of plastic bags that are produced every year. According to reports, Morocco has seized 420 tonnes of plastic bags since the implementation of the ban.
In choosing to take active steps against plastic pollution, Morocco and other countries that have implemented plastic bag bans have chosen to be part of the solution rather than the problem. Few people, including many reading this article today, realise that an average single-use plastic bag takes 1,000 years to decompose.
We are temporary beings but the filth we produce will last almost forever.
Given that human beings have produced 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic so far, and continue to do so at distressingly fast rates, the time may soon come when the plastic we create begins to crowd out life itself.
There is evidence of this in the oceans. Seabirds like gulls and others along with sea mammals like seals, turtles and dolphins routinely get tangled in plastic bags and choke. Marine turtles, once the pride and delight of beachgoers in Karachi, cannot distinguish between jellyfish which they eat, and plastic bags which kill them. The result: the ever-dwindling numbers of marine life on the plastic-polluted shores of the Arabian Sea.
Fish ingest plastic too and the cancerous effects of humans eating marine creatures that have consumed plastic will likely become apparent in the next few years as the incidence of cancer and other pollutant-related ailments increases even more.
The amount of plastic dumped in the ocean is reaching such staggering levels that there are actually three ‘islands’ made of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean. They aren’t going away for hundreds and hundreds of years, long after the humans who used them for the sake of convenience, without a thought to the larger impact of non-biodegradable plastics, are dead. We are temporary beings but the filth we produce will last almost forever.
Pakistanis, most of whom do not live by the sea, find it hard to care for the health of the oceans that they may never have seen, let alone the fate of generations to come.
At the same time, one can only hope that they may be convinced to care for what they see. A cursory glance at any part of Pakistan is guaranteed to reveal the ugly spectre of a plastic bag or several plastic bags either hanging from phone and electric wires, waving merrily from rubbish heaps and clogging gutters, or simply blowing around in the wind in a street or alley.
The bags are everywhere, and the rich and poor and concerned and completely thoughtless can all see for themselves just how horribly they transform the environment. If civic concern cannot galvanise them into action, perhaps a concern for the fact that nearly every view in every part of the country has been tainted by the plastic bag can bring about some action.
This is the reason why the example of Morocco is particularly pertinent. Unlike in Balochistan, which supposedly already announced such a ban, but whose enforcement seems lax if not non-existent, and the Sindh government, which had also announced such a ban but has since forgotten about it, Morocco has actually devoted resources to ensuring that it remains one.
It is not that the country has not faced a struggle in the form of a black market in which plastic bags are sold illegally, following the legislation that was passed with fines imposed on violators. The main point is that the bags are banned and their numbers are being drastically reduced since the time before the ban. That in itself is a victory.
Others are following suit. The Indian state of Maharashtra, whose coastline also borders the Arabian Sea, fed up with watching debris pile up on the beaches and in drains and city streets, has imposed a ban on all plastic goods. The ban imposed by the state government lays out exemptions for items such as garbage bags, packing for processed goods, milk pouches, medical supplies and other essential items. The use of plastic for any other purpose, given the thoughtless convenience of not having to use an alternative, will not be allowed.
Early reports showed an eagerness to comply; vegetable and fruit sellers on the streets of Mumbai had put up small handmade signs asking people to please bring bags from home, as they were no longer permitted to provide them.
There was, of course, a time in South Asia before the plastic bag became ubiquitous, a time when jute and cane baskets and rope bags or reusable plastic baskets were used to transport things. Unlike the Western world, admittedly the largest producer of plastic waste, Pakistanis only have to remember old habits, not necessarily learn new skills.
If the plight of the seagulls and the fish and the birds doesn’t move you, then just look outside, up and down and around. Wouldn’t it be simply wonderful, completely amazing, to never ever have to see the black and blue and striped shreds of plastic as the backdrop to every moment, every scene and every site?
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2018