World Environment Day (WED) is commemorated globally on 5 June every year. WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The days agenda is to:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;

2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;

3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;

4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

Think Global Act Local : While this years global theme for WED 2009 is Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change we in Vizag need to focus on issues that affect our environment and our lives every day. We are blessed to live in one of the most naturally beautiful cities in India with wave swept beaches on one side and green rolling hills on the other. But our city is under threat as never before from the pressures of hyper urbanization. "Make Vizag Clean & Green" is not just another slogan, if we really care for our city we must stand up and fight to make it happen, we must strive to make our city pristine and beautiful.

The priorities are to…
1. Become aware of the laws concerning our environment - use the knowledge to demand good environmental governance
2. Do our part in keeping our city clean and bring about a "clean culture" among Vizagites
3. Plant as many trees as we can and look after the trees we already have
4. Make our voice heard against mindless "development" that are destroying our coast and forests

Vizagites have always been aware and progressive lot and if we put our mind to saving our city we can. Jai Ho Vizag.

On this World Environment Day (5th June 2009), VizagCityOnline.com hopes that the following article on Plastic Pollution in Vizag by Mr. Sohan Hatangadi, a longtime resident of Vizag, will stir Vizagites into action.

« Sohan Hatangadi

Plastic Pollution in Vizag

Our plastic lives: Our lives are intimately entwined with plastic. Every day we wake up in the morning, squeeze toothpaste from our plastic tubes on to our plastic toothbrush, compress our plastic shampoo bottle, take the soap from our plastic soap case, we sit on our plastic potty, reading the newspaper through our plastic spectacles. We have breakfast from our Melamine bowls, juice from our plastic tumblers. At work we sit on our plastic chairs, punching plastic keys, looking at plastic monitors and talking into plastic phones. Welcome to the wonderful world of plastic.

The new Plastic Gods : We have a love affair with plastic. Look around and see the ubiquitous water bottles, water sachets, plastic bags, tea cups, plastic plates, pan massala sachets, and the miracle of modern packing - Styrofoam. Plastics are in mounds everywhere, from the snow clad mountains of Kashmir to the sea swept beaches of Kanya Kumari. From the temples of Madurai to the red light district of Mumbai.

Look around : Closer to home you find them at your friendly neighborhood tiffin tea and panipoori shop, stuffed into Vizags drains and geddas and floating like dead ducks in our water reservoirs. The cups plates and bags are strewn on Vizags earlier pristine beaches, at RTC bus stands, at our holy temples, alongside our roads and rail tracks and on every empty plot of land. They are festooned on trees and bushes like festival decorations. Indeed if you look at any heap of dirt on the streets more than half of it will be plastic waste! Our ancient civilization and her cultured people now worship the new plastic Gods - PVC and PET.

Mass hypnotism : At the social clubs of Waltair Uplands, where the rich and famous congregate to the budget wedding at Madhuranagar, where "Lakshmi weds Anand", refreshments are served in plastic glasses and plates and then simply chucked on the road side. It is as if we are all hypnotized into believing that the ugly stuff will simply vanish into thin air once it is thrown away.

Well of course it doesnt magically vanish! It stays there for years and years and years. In fact the old plastic shopping bag you throw away will still be blowing around here and there even when your great-great grand children walk the Earth. Future children may even think that plastic on the ground was simply some type of natural earth!

When did it happen?
Ever so recently soft drinks were sold in glass bottles. You gave a deposit if you wanted to take the bottle home and simply gave the empty back to collect your deposit. Most folk drank tap water filtered with a candle filter. When we travelled we carried our own glass bottle, or "Eagle" jug. In railway stations we hurried to the "Drinking Water" taps and filled up. The water had a peculiar metallic taste but nothing drastic happened to us. Food stalls served us idly on regular plates with a banana leaf on it. The plates would be used for years and We carried our sturdy cloth bags to the vegetable market and Kirana shops where the vendor would pack our provisions lovingly in paper and wrapped them with a piece of jute twine. Our bags were characteristic shopping accessory that could be used for several years. Those were the good old plastic-free days.

The ascent of Use-and-throw plastic
Then along came the marketing guys who figured that they could actually sales and make more money by eliminating the deposit system for bottles, shopkeepers discovered plastic bags for the impulse buyers, and the "tea kottu" gave up washable tea cups for the convenient plastic cups. Suddenly it became fashionable to pack everything in plastic, from soaps to soup, from shoes to booze and from custard to mustard. Everything became use and throw. And suddenly things have started going out of hand. Plastics started proliferating like virus and before long we were surrounded by it from all sides and from below.

So what is plastic and where does plastic come from?
Brace yourself for some plastic funda. Plastics are complex organic compounds produced by polymerization, capable of being molded, extruded, cast into various shapes and films, or drawn into filaments. (Websters Dictionary). The word "plastic" comes from the Greek word plastikos, meaning "able to be molded."

All plastic products are made from petroleum. This petroleum or oil was formed from the remains of marine plant and animal life which existed many millions of years ago, that is why it is called a fossil fuel. These remains decomposed an aerobically (without oxygen) by bacteria which changed the sediments into fatty acids which then changed into an asphaltic material called "kerogen" which then converted over millions of years by the combined action of heat and pressure into petroleum. Petroleum engineers drill into the ground to find these reservoirs of oil under the earth and bring it up to the surface.

Good plastics - bad plastics : The great thing about plastics is that they are light and easy to transport, can be molded to any shape and can be in several attractive colours. They are tough and durable. Plastics are in electrical cabling, cars, aircrafts, boats & ships, bikes, medical equipment, home appliances, TVs, dinnerware and toys. We have no grouse against these useful and long lasting plastics.

Our quarrel is with the disposable plastics such as shopping bags, plastic wrappers, plastic tea cups, Styrofoam packing material etc.

The trouble with plastics : The same reasons that make plastics such an attractive material also are the reasons that make it such a headache to get rid of. Plastics are not soluble in water and they just do not decompose or deteriorate easily. So every time we throw away plastics it just does not "go away". It remains in the environment for hundreds and hundreds of years. The banana peel or leaf you throw away will decompose in a week or two but the Rs. 12 Bisleri bottle you chuck into your back yard will lie there for 450 years!

Greater impact on coastal towns : The impact of disposable plastic is greater in a coastal town like Vizag because it cause a terrible visual degradation of our beaches. On the Sagar Nagar beach, I once counted 25 plastic tea cups in just a 5 meter by 5 meter area. If you went counting you would easily come across a million plastic tea cups on our Vizag beach! Several tons of plastic waste ends up in our sea, blown by the wind or through open drains or pushed along by rain water flowing in Vizags many Geddas. The sea is especially sensitive to plastic debris and thousands of sea creatures die when they mistakenly eat plastic waste or become entangled in disposed plastic nets.

Burning of plastic waste : One of the methods of disposing waste plastics generally seen in Vizag is to gather them in heaps and setting them on fire. This is dangerous because it causes environmental hazards that extend far beyond the burning site. The burning of polyvinylchloride (PVC) plastics produces persistent organic pollutants (POPs) known as furans and dioxins. These pollutants have been associated with adverse effects in humans, including immune and enzyme disorders. They are classified as possible human carcinogens.

What does the law have to say about plastics?
The laws relating to plastics which should be widely publicized is perhaps the Governments best kept secret! But you can find some of the information you need about plastic pollution on APPCB web site http://appcb.ap.nic.in/.

I summarize here just some of the salient points of the law pertaining to plastics

• The Andhra Pradesh State Pollution Control Board (APPCB) is the authority to enforce the ban on the manufacture, sale and use of recycled and coloured plastic carry bags of less than 20 microns in thickness in the state.

• The District Collector and the Municipal Commissioner are to enforce rules pertaining to the use, collection, segregation, transportation and disposal of plastic carry bags and containers. They are also required to enforce the rules pertaining to thickness and marking of carry bags being used by the vendors.

• District Task Force The Government is supposed to have constituted a District Level Task Force Committee chaired by the District Collector with members such as Mayor, Municipal Chairman, GM of District Industries Centre, Officer of the APPCB, District Supply Officer, District Panchayat Officer, Sarpanchs of abutting villages, NGOs etc.

• Plastic bags of less than 20 microns thickness must be destroyed wherever they are found and none of this thin material must ever be used to manufacture bags. Plastic carry bags must be marked either "recycled material" or of "virgin plastic" depending on the raw material used. For recycled bags the mark should state how much of the material is recycled.

• The District level Taskforce committee headed by the Collector must ensure that no plastic articles are disposed off in public places. The persons found throwing plastic articles namely water bottles, cool drink bottles, plastic containers etc. will be penalized. (Ha!)

The Penalties:

• Manufacturing units, found to be violating the rules, relating to manufacture, recycling, thickness and marking, shall be fined Rs. 25,000 to 50,000 for the first offence and the license/consent of the unit shall be cancelled for the subsequent offence in addition to confiscating the machinery used for the manufacture.

• The retailers, vendors and other establishments found to be violating the rules, relating to the use of plastic carry bags of banned category, shall be fined Rs. 2,500 to 5,000 for the first offence and the trade license of the violator shall be cancelled for the subsequent offence, under relevant Municipal Laws and shops and Establishments Act.

• Individuals found to be littering public places with plastic bags shall be fined Rs. 250 to 500 per offence.

• Segregation of domestic waste: The District level Taskforce committee shall also expedite the provisions under Solid Waste Management notification of 2000 with regard to segregation at source adopting two bin system. This Taskforce must insist that apartments and group housing colonies segregate their domestic plastics waste from other garbage. The taskforce is responsible for creating awareness programmes in the public as well as Shopkeepers. (Is anyone aware of this?)

What can we do about this problem?
Now that we appreciate the problem, understand plastics and have had a glimpse of the law, what can we do about it? Well the answer is that we all have a role to play.

The role of the authorities:

• The APPCB, the GVMC and the Taskforce made for the purpose of reducing plastic pollution must do their job by educating the public and enforcing all the laws available to them.

• They should let the public know how many prosecutions they have made every month under these laws

• Taxes on shopping bags and disposable Poly Propylene containers used for serving tea, coffee or water must be doubled so that the use of it becomes unviable

• A hotline number must be established for concerned citizens to complain about illegal littering and this number must be advertised as widely as the 108 numbers

• Several areas must be declared "Plastic Free Zones, starting from the Beach Road and areas such as Purna Market, Gajuwaka, Dwarakanagar, Gopalapatnam and all Rythu Bazaars.

• There are very limited recycling facilities in our district, the Government through the industries department and financial bodies must encourage setting up of many recycling units in the state by offering tax subsidies and easy finance.

The role of large manufacturers:

• All manufacturers such as Coke, Pepsi, Bisleri, Kinley, Vijaya Dairy etc., who package their products in plastic bottles, sachets or any containers must arrange collection centers at all their retail points throughout the city and take back their empties for proper disposal or recycling.

The role of retailers, vendors and other establishments

• All establishments such as super markets, hypermarkets, kirana shops, vegetable shops, meat shops, pan shops, etc. must cut back on the use of plastic bags. They must ask their customers to bring their own cloth bags. No plastic bags should be given away free, every bag should be charged so that customers have an incentive to get their own bags next time
  " All trade associations should urge their members to reduce plastic consumption.

The role of the tea-tiffin shops

• This segment causes maximum impact on the streets and public places of Vizag. Every tea and tiffin shop on the streets must be made responsible for handling their own waste. They must provide bins for the empties and ask their customers to use these bins. If they sell tea in plastic cups it is their responsibility to ensure safe disposal

• They must be encouraged to use disposable plates made of organic material such as adda leaf or banana leaf plates.

The role of consumers and general public

• First become aware, be responsible and tell yourself that you can play a part in cleaning up the city you love

• Try to reduce consumption of plastics by using reusable shopping bags. Two years ago I bought 6 bags at Rs.4 each, made of old reused polypropylene cement bags, they are still going strong

• If there is a function we must cut back on disposable plastic cups and plates. Try serving refreshments in washable plates and liquids in washable cups or glasses. It is better to wash a few dishes and cups rather than messing up the neighborhood with disposable stuff.

• If you must use disposables, ensure that they are disposed properly

• At home never throw loose rubbish into bins - always use a garbage bags

• Put your kitchen waste into one bag and the rest in another; segregate your rubbish into plastics and non-plastics. The garbage collectors will find it easier to take the plastics away for recycling, otherwise they will have to manually sift through all the food items to take out the plastics

• Talk to your apartment association and get two large bins installed in your building. You can buy large Sintex or any similar brand of garbage bins with covers, they look neat and keep crows and dogs from rummaging through the garbage

• GVMC now collects garbage from homes, talk to your corporator or call GVMC to make this happen

• At every shop ask for the disposal bin; never throw anything on the ground or on the road side. If you see someone throwing waste in public places, you must show your displeasure politely, do not walk away shaking your head, if you really care - you must get involved!

• Spread the word in the neighborhood and pressure defaulters to change their ways, if they do not listen you must call GVMC, ask for the sanitary inspector of your ward and complain

• Harass the GVMC to get your area cleaned, they are not doing you a favour, their salary comes from taxes all of us pay!

The role of NGOs

• Form "People against Plastics" cells in every neighborhood. Every weekend a small group of volunteers should go around selected areas of the neighborhood and request plastic polluters to refrain from spoiling your neighborhood. Recognize the cleanest shop, the cleanest apartment association by a simple letter of appreciation and a certificate.

• Pressure the appropriate government bodies to do their job sincerely

The role of the press

• The press doesnt like to be told how they should write, and the electronic media are too busy covering politics, but the fact is that even the press comprises ordinary citizens like us and every editor, every reporter can make a difference by asking the right questions and sensitizing the public to the issues of garbage handling and especially plastic pollution.

The Corporate role

• I often see large number of staff of companies/banks/call centers buying tea or snacks from little stalls outside their work place and throwing all the empties into the nearest drains. If you are a large organisation with plenty of workers it is good Corporate Social Responsibility to sensitize your own staff about handling garbage. Also you should think of contributing bins or baskets to the eateries around your organisation so that waste can be disposed off neatly.

The role of educational establishments

• Many educational establishments, due to a high population of students, tend to mess up the area around their institution. The teachers and administration of these institutions should sensitize the students and indeed make a project of cleaning up in and around the campus.

• The Andhra University can help with their social studies department getting involved in educating all the vendors around the university as these vendors are responsible for massive plastic pollution usually with tea cups.

Let us all get involved
If you believe that we must clean up our city and reduce plastic pollution, get involved today, send us your ideas by email at stopplasticpollution@gmail.com

A strong sustained drive will clean up our city and set a benchmark in cleanliness and lowered plastic waste for all urban as well as rural areas in our country. This can be done. It must be done for our future and for the future of our children.