I read and heard about ill effects of Plastic usage, as its tough to recycle. Finally it all goes in ocean, and they have found huge floating plastic stocks, as it doesn't sink!
Lets look at history. Plastic was invented in 1862. Till then we would use cloth and jute carry bags, iron,copper and steel made utensils. All these materials are recycled easily, where as plastic can be only converted from one form to another, and in every conversion it becomes harder and harder and finally it can't be converted further.
Store and transport of any useful daily life item was done to the minimum necessity. Local products were purchased (which is also good for local economy) and used soon. Now a days, even milk is available only in plastic, the "Doodhwalas" have almost disappeared! If you buy anything, unless you are carrying a cloth bag, the merchant is ready with a plastic "carry bag"! Especially in the malls and supermarkets, all items come covered with plastic for "keeping them new", avoiding dustiness.
The combined effect of all this is that each one of uses on an average uses plastic worth 4 carry bags every week. Multiply that with the population, and number of weeks in a year, you will see that we create thousands of tons of plastic per year!
Many people take resolves of not using plastic anymore, but then at some places like milk purchase it becomes totally unavoidable! So what I decided sometime ago is not to take any further carry bags from any shop. RE-USE the bags that I have already got. Still because of lack of awareness, these many bags piled up in my home in few months:
I have at last stopped throwing them, and use them well, until they are torn and of no use anymore.
This habit was bit inconvenient at times, and you would sometimes see me walking in the lane of my home with a pack of bread, butter and a mixture in my two hands, since I refused the carry bag to the bakery merchant! And at other times my college bag would be swollen big because I have put all the purchased items in it, from milk and grains to clothes and stationary!
In Big Bazaar they give plastic even from procure section of vegetable to billing section, because they need to mark the weight of that vegetable. So I get that thing billed, then come out, put the vegetables in my bag, and return theirs!
Another related hazard is that many cleaning workers tend to burn the garbage, and a good amount of it being plastic, it gives lot of hazardous smoke in the environment.
If your really look at it, this "user friendly" material is not so much wanted after the use. e.g. you don't want that plastic cover which your bike had when you purchased it. Neither you want the cover on the cd that you bought. I don't think plastic shoes are popular, and nobody wears a plastic suit!(Imagine yourself in a plastic shirt, pant, and hosiery!) So we keep plastic as distant from a personal use as possible, but use it so often for an intermediate use.
Thank you for not using any (more) plastic!
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