Thousand Life Monster …
What is your greatest fear?
World war 3? Recession? My greatest fear is the lethargy with which we are acting towards a thousand life monster. My greatest fear is, we might as a race make extinct all races, including ours. My greatest fear is, we might leave a barren world for our next generation, if we don’t act now.
Climate change is an eminent threat to the entire flora and fauna, not just to the mankind. We have been reaping the benefits from nature for as long as 10,000 years (When agriculture started). But right now, our sophistications and luxuries are killing the golden goose (Nature).
Plastic, a thousand life monster, might be the toxic that is responsible for all this. We as a race are consuming 600 million tons of plastic every year. The plastic we consume in a year, will take more than 10 centuries (1000 years) to decompose. It is filling the landmass, which otherwise could be used for vegetation.
The raw material for Plastic — Resin, is an output of fossil fuels (Crude oil). Fossil fuel is the greatest contributor to CO2 emission. If you think coal/petrol is the major contributor for Carbon emission, you might be mistaken as am. Resin — the raw material required for Plastics is the major contributor for greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore plastic is a major contributor to climate change.
Plastic from birth till death (if there is one for plastic) is harmful to the environment. And yet, we are so liberally using plastics in our day to day lives. An average person consumes 4kg plastic per month.
Is there a way out? Recycling plastic? Until few years back that recycle symbol on plastics was a symbol of hope for me. But not now, after I learnt that only 10% of plastics get recycled. Since the quality of recycled plastic is very low than virgin plastics, most of the industries still prefer Virgin plastics, than recycled plastics.
How about Incineration? (Burning Plastics in a special chamber) This also leads to very high air pollution and thus Carbonization.
Apart from this, the plastic is already making the oceans worse. The marine biodiversity has gone down to unimaginable levels because of dumping plastic waste in Ocean. It does passively contribute to Ocean acidification also through climate change.
Therefore technically, Plastic is that thousand life monster that’s going to kill all of us.
The only way of winning against this thousand life monster, is when everyone of us stands united in our resolution to avoid plastic.
Every time you avoid a plastic bag/cup/straw, remember you are hero fighting against a thousand life monster and trying to restore the ecological balance.
What does the author do for avoiding plastics?
I do not believe in preaching or being a hypocrite. So, I would for now share whatever I am doing to avoid plastic.
1) Use cotton bags for purchasing groceries
2) Avoid Packaged Restaurant foods coming in big plastic boxes. (Microplastic is also a very big contributor to lots of health issues)
3) Speak to People around about avoiding Single use Plastics.
I set myself a goal to reduce my plastic usage to 1 Kg per month, within the end of this year. How about you ?