25 August
I HAD written a few articles related to the plastic pollution problems that are impacting our planet. It has been sometimes that I haven't turned my attention to those issues. However, a few days ago I happened upon a very intriguing TV documentary, titled: "Drowning in Plastic". That documentary inspired me to write this article. Metaphorically speaking, we are drowning in plastic. It's undeniable that the plastic wastes are polluting the environments; impacting on the climate change and plaguing our planet and all living beings.
Health hazards of plastics
Plastics are made from petrochemicals. As petrochemical products, they contain certain toxic chemicals that can cause a variety of health problems to humans and animals alike. Humans can be affected by those toxins through ingestions and also by contacts. Some may argue that humans wouldn't eat the plastics to get affected by ingestions. In fact they are doing that without knowing it.
Plastics contain toxic elements that can be released at certain high temperatures. Today, most restaurants and teashops in our country are using plastic cups, bags, boxes and other forms of plastic packings to pack their foods for take away orders. Piping hot beverages such as: tea, coffee, milk or chocolate drinks and hot soups, noodles and other forms of food that are served hot, are packed in the same way. This can cause contaminations to the foods and drinks packed in them. In some advanced countries people are cautioned against the use of plastic containers in serving or packing hot foods and beverages.
Effects on humans - Exposure to petrochemicals may take place in different ways. They may either be absorbed through the skin just by contact or exposure to them or might be ingested unknowingly by consuming foods packed in plastic containers, especially very hot foods and beverages. They can also affect human life by accumulating in tissues/ organs and cause brain, nerve and liver damage, birth defects, cancer, asthma and hormonal disorders. The plastics being petrochemical products, all these effects could also be inflicted by them.
Effects on animals - The animals are also affected by the plastics; in most cases led to their deaths. The most affected are the marine animals. Some land animals too are affected by the plastics, but such incidents are much rarer than those of the marine animals. The news of dead or sick whales, dolphins, sharks, dugongs, sea turtles, seals and other large species of marine animals being washed up on beaches around the world are becoming commonplace. In most cases those animals had ingested large amount of plastic wastes.
A few days ago a video clip on the Facebook showed a turtle with a plastic straw all the way up its nostril. Some people tried to extract that straw with a pliers, but without any success. I don't know what the fate of that turtle was, but it was definitely a very sorrowful sight to watch. Some sea animals got entangled in plastic threads, strings, ropes and fishing nets that are abound in the seas and oceans and often died from strangling or drowning if not rescued by humans in time.
As most plastics are not readily biodegradable or in other words easily decomposable, once the marine animals swallowed them, they can neither be digested nor easily excreted out of their bodies. Those plastics block the poor animals' digestive systems and as they cannot relieve themselves, they could succumb to deaths if they didn't get human help in time.
I had once written in one of my articles that most of the plastics recklessly disposed end up in the seas and oceans brought down via drains, streams, creeks and rivers. Even our Ayeyawady River is found by experts to be depositing 119 tons of plastic wastes into the sea daily. Of all the plastic wastes ending up in the oceans and seas, the Great Pacific garbage patch is the largest. It is said, the area covered by that patch is larger than the US state of Texas. When the plastic flotsams sink to the bottom they endanger the corals and other sea vegetations, such as: sea grass and weeds, etc, that are foods for some marine lives.
These effects damage the ecosystems.
Hardly visible to casual observers are the numerous microplastic particles that are present in the oceans and seas. They are the results of the plastic wastes breaking up and disintegrating into tiny particles due to long exposure to sun, winds, and waves; and bacteria accumulated during their long journey on the oceans. These are killing the marine lives, large and small, in cluding the shellfish and crustaceans that lie deep on the ocean floors.
Today plastic wastes and microplastic particles can be found in almost every ocean and on every beach all over the world, sparing none. They are carried by the ocean currents and winds to far away places.
Plastic waste dumping
Some developed countries are dumping their plastic wastes in the developing nations. Until lately, some countries in our region, namely Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, where some business firms had been illegally importing the plastic wastes from abroad to be recycled at their factories. Those illegal recycling pkants burn the un-recyclable plastics at night to get rid of them instead of sending to garbage dumps. Burning plastics produce noxious gases that are not only hazardous to humans' health; they also worsen the climate change. Lately, their governments had taken actions against such dumping and had back-loaded the plastic wastes to the countries of origin.
Reduction of plastic use is the only viable solution
As plastic products are cheap to manufacture, easy to transport and amazingly strong and durable, they are widely used.
However, due to their adverse impacts many countries are now endeavoring to reduce the use of plastics. Amongst them are two of our closest neighbours -- Bangladesh and Thailand. I'm not sure how Bangladesh is tackling that problem, but as for Thailand they are giving incentives to the public to discourage the reliance on plastic bags as a preliminary step. If the customers come shopping with their own shopping bags, some shopping malls and supermarkets give their registered members points that are redeemable in exchange for some commodities sold at their shops depending on the number of points earned. Recently the Thai authorities had ruled it compulsory for every supermarket not to issue free plastic shopping bags on the 4th of every month and every Tuesdays.
Here, I would like to give credit to our City Mart Supermarkets, which had introduced the policy of not providing free plastic shopping bags two days a month -- on the last Monday and Tuesday of every month. On those days the customers are required to bring their own shopping bags or buy the more eco-friendly shopping bags from them. The price for those bags are quite cheap too. It is learnt that the proceeds from the sale of those bags are donated towards the environmental protection funds. The authorities should consider ruling that practice compulsory for other supermarkets too.
Conclusion
These days, I always make it a point to go shopping with my own shopping bag. My objective is to reduce the number of used plastic bags littering my house. I noticed that even for one, who lives alone, there could be many used plastic bags and plastic water bottles piling up in the waste basket almost daily. Today, I had also stopped buying bottled drinking water; instead boil the tap water for drinking. That reduced the plastic wastes in my house drastically and feel safer to drink, with so many fake drinking water brands in the markets today.
I would also like to suggest to the authorities to introduce the use of broad tree leaves, like the banana leaves, lotus leaves, In Phet, Bandar Ywet and similar broad leaves to pack foodstuffs. I had made a similar suggestion once in one of my articles some years ago, but hasn't materialized as yet. Being tree products they are readily decomposable and considered to be organic, thus more eco-friendly and safer. If we can substitute plastic with tree leaves and paper bags as in the pre-plastic age and if every household would do their shopping with own shopping bags, the volume of the plastic wastes would decrease significantly. This will safe our planet. Planet or plastic? Make your choice now.
By Khin Maung Myint
