January 15, 2020
The team was astonished by just how widespread the plastic contamination
Three city-based NGOs get together to overhaul the plastic disposal system in Mumbai. (Left to right) Tushar Warang, Dr Nilima Gajbhiye of the NSS Unit, Jayesh Harsora and student Disha Dhadve hand over a sapling to a donor. As Mumbaikars clock in the third week of the plastic ban in the city, two NGOs, Vasundhara Club and Angolichi Goli have come up with an effective solution to prevent the dumping of plastic bags into landfills. The NGOs collaborated with the National Service Scheme (NSS) unit of Ramnarain Ruia College in Matunga on Saturday to beat plastic pollution. A desk was put up at the college quadrangle, where students could deposit a minimum of five plastic bags in exchange for a sapling. The collected plastics will now be donated to the Mumbai based Nirbahaya Foundation who will then send it to the G. D. Environmental Pvt. Ltd. plant in Pune, from where, the plastic bags will be incinerated to produce high-speed diesel and biofuel.The idea behind this initiative is to promote a steadfast alternative to mitigate plastic pollution. Recycling plastic alone does not assure that plastic will not end up in the landfills and water bodies across the city and this initiative enables citizens to put their unused plastic to good use. "The reason we are not giving this plastic to the recycler is that only a certain kind of plastic is used by them and after segregation we are still left with heaps of plastic,†says Tushar Warang from the NGO Angolichi Goli."We want to bring forth alternatives for people to dispose their plastic. People still don’t know what to do with the unused plastic and we are here to fill that gap. We also have a track record of every single plastic bag we collect, as also the saplings distributed. We want to provide a valuable and long-lasting alternative,â€says Tushar.Jayesh Harsora, the founder of Vasudhara Green Club, is an advocate for both the plastic ban and for spreading the importance of trees,
We have only learnt to use plastic, but the second thing about plastic is its disposal which we have not learnt. We cannot dump plastics anywhere. The whole concept might be to beat plastic pollution, but I guess to manage plastic is more important. We have to develop a sustainable lifestyle. Just like when you cook food you have to think of all the members of the family. The purpose for giving these saplings is to connect with nature and to create a source of oxygen in a city like Mumbai.â€The drive has managed to collect 400 plastic bags with the help of students from the college and has distributed 80 indoor and outdoor plant saplings to the donors.This collection of plastic bags will now be given to the Nirbhaya Foundation that has been championing the elimination of plastic in the city for the last 18 months. "We are a group of 150-200 ladies who started giving information about the plastic menace to people. But only awareness is not enough to convince people.
When we recycle plastic it turns into a low-grade plastic. So when hot food is put inside recycled plastic containers, the nanoparticles in them dissolve and enter our bodies; which according to research, is the major cause of cancer and infertility. So why depend on others when we can take action ourselves? Other than plastic we also want to eliminate dry waste. So we send this plastic to make high-speed diesel, which can be used in cars, generators and where every diesel can be used. Our tagline ‘my plastic is my responsibility’ speaks for itself,†says Asmita Gokhale, founder of the Nirbhaya Foundation.
While this activity earlier took place at Goregaon’s Patkar college, these NGOs now plan to conduct various such drives at colleges, societies and slums across the city. "Wherever people are willing to eliminate plastics, we will be there,†concludes Tushar.m-18But they realised that during the course of expeditions dating back a decade
they had accumulated dozens of specimens of a species of tiny shrimp that lives
between 6000-11,000 metres (19,500-36,000 feet) beneath the surface.Cases of
plastic ingestion have been reported among the deepest ocean animals. More than
300 million tonnes of plastics are produced annually, and there are at wholesale
plastic blow moulding machine least five trillion plastic pieces floating in
our oceans." Because plastic contamination is now so widespread, even at extreme
depths, the team cautioned that it was nearly impossible to know what effect
plastic ingestion was having on bottom dwelling species. (Photo: AFP)
Philippines: Animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with
plastic fragments in their gut."These particles could just pass straight through
the animal, but in the animals we looked at they must be blocking them.Because
deep-sea exploration is expensive and time-consuming, most studies on plastic
pollution up until now had been close to the surface, showing a widespread level
of plastic contamination in fish, turtles, whales and sea birds. "It's off
Japan, off New Zealand, off Peru, and each trench is phenomenally deep,"
Jamieson said.
The equivalent would be for you to swallow a 2 metre
polypropylene rope and expect that not to have an adverse affect on your
health," said Jamieson. It's everywhere. Jamieson and his team normally spend
their time looking for new species in the depths of the ocean. Now a British
team of researchers say they have discovered cases of plastic ingestion among
tiny shrimp in six of the world's deepest ocean trenches.In the Mariana Trench
east of the Philippines, the deepest depression on Earth, 100 percent of the
animals studied had plastic fibres in their digestive tracts. "We are sitting on
the deepest dataset in the world, so if we find (plastics) in these, we are
done," Jamieson told AFP. A new research showed how manmade pollution reaches
into the bowels of the planet.
The team was astonished by just how widespread the
plastic contamination at extreme depths proved to be. Microplastic particles are
either dumped directly into the seas via sewers and rivers or form when larger
chunks of plastic break down over time.He further added, "The salient point is
that they are consistently found in animals all around the Pacific at
extraordinary depths so let's not waste time. Yet plastic was found in both.
"Half of me was expecting to find something but that is huge," said Alan
Jamieson, from Newcastle University's School of Natural and Environmental
Sciences. For instance, the Peru-Chile Trench in the southeast Pacific is around
15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles) from the Japan Trench.
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