Talking Shop: Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

“Plastic will be the main

ingredient of all our

grandchildren’s recipes.”

— Anthony T Hincks

Today is Mayday, but of a very different kind, one that threatens mankind’s very existence. Taunt Mother Nature and she will surely and swiftly strike back with brutal and merciless force. It is already happening increasingly on various fronts, with a vehemence that is scary. Smog not just surrounds us, but is now quite clearly visible in the air, leading to alarming levels of pollution and sending all warning-level indicators into the red. Look at the water we consume and use for so much else; it is filled with creatures that I will not list here, if only to ensure that you don’t start the new week on a creepy note. And there’s a new kid on the block now, created by man and made near-indestructible by us—it cannot be reduced, re-used, repaired, rebuilt, refurnished, refinished, composted; welcome to the new world of micro-plastics.

The lifecycle of plastics, right from extraction to manufacturing and dumping into landfills and our oceans, tells its own macabre tale, responsible as this deadly material is for wide-ranging ailments such as cancers, lung disease and birth defects. A recent review by the Boston College Global Observatory on Planetary Health found that mankind’s patterns of plastic production, use and disposal are just not sustainable and are “responsible for significant harms to human health as well as for deep societal injustices”.

The review further said the main driver of these worsening harms is an exponential and accelerating increase in global plastic production. Plastic’s harms are magnified by low rates of recovery and recycling and by the long persistence of plastic waste in the environment. Coal-miners, oil and gas-field workers who extract fossil carbon feedstock for plastic production, along with production workers, have been most at risk. But get a load of this—traces of micro-plastics have recently been detected in the placenta of unborn babies while still in their mothers’ wombs. Whew.

How is it hurting us?

Well, it is doing so silently but in a deadly manner. Plastic production workers are at increased risk of leukaemia, lymphoma, brain cancer, breast cancer and decreased fertility. Plastic recycling workers have increased rates of cardiovascular disease, toxic metal poisoning, neuropathy, as also lung cancer. Communities living in the vicinity of plastic production sites are experiencing premature birth, low birth weight, asthma, childhood leukaemia, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

We all frequently talk of Climate Change while doing little or nothing to mitigate the scourge, and the same attitude is now being seen with plastics. There are micro-plastics in the water we drink; trace elements are being increasingly found in the food we eat, in the vegetables we buy and, hell, even in the air we breathe. Nearly all humans now consume “a fair amount of plastic”, the review concluded. Unfortunately, though, micro-plastics and its detrimental effects on human health are still not researched or understood well. And while the globe’s leaders congregate every now and then to debate the festering problem and yet fail to find a lasting solution, the blight is getting exacerbated with each passing day.

Try as countries might, even in the so-called ‘Developed Nations’, the ban on plastic products, especially on the single-use variety, is just not happening or implemented sternly enough. If the superpowers of the world are not recycling more than 15-20 per cent of their discarded and dumped plastic products and materials, what can be expected of poorer nations, which do not have deep pockets and also lack education and awareness? The writing has been on the wall for more than a while, but no global treaty on plastic goods has been reached.

Indian complexities

As mentioned at the outset itself, the situation on the plastics and other pollution fronts is complex and involves many-a-score intricacies, such as the burning of plastics, rubber and stubble, the resultant dust and a hell of a lot of industrial pollution. Your world and mine is not ideal, nor is this your predicament alone. In a clean and unencumbered world, we may have manifested and corrected our response and responded to this hiatus. Today, we see neither. We are now witnessing climactic mayhem. How so? Here is how.

Of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, 21 are in India. And at least 14 crore people in India breathe air that is at least 10 times or more polluted than the WHO safe limit. And 13 of the world’s 20 cities with the highest annual levels of air pollution are in India. Sadly, a further 51 per cent of pollution in India is caused by industries, 27 per cent by vehicles, 17 per cent by crop-burning and 5 per cent by other sources. And guess which city leads the list in India in terms of abject pollution—Amritsar. The overall situation is alarming indeed.

You want more? India is the world’s largest consumer of fuel-wood, agricultural waste and biomass for energy. We annually use 14.87 crore tonnes of coal replacement worth of fuel-wood and biomass. The overall contribution of fuel-wood, including sawdust and wood waste, is 46 per cent, all told, the rest being agricultural waste and biomass dung. In urban areas, traditional fuel constitutes 24 per cent and we burn this ten times more than even the United States.

What can be done?

Moving back to plastics, there is a chilling amount floating around in our oceans, estimated by top scientists to be in the region of 170 trillion plastic products. These same scientists have further warned that any “cleanup is futile”, if man continues to pump plastics into the environment at the current alarming rates. “Cleanup is futile if we continue to produce plastic at the current rate and we have heard about recycling for too long while the plastic industry simultaneously rejects any commitments to buy recycled material or design for recyclability. It’s time to address the plastic problem at the source,” scientists at the 5 Gyres Institute said in a report.

Research has also come up with scathing observations—that international policies on plastic are fragmented, lack specificity and do not include measurable targets. Researchers have called for corporate responsibility for plastic production to be enforced globally, with legally binding legislation that addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, from extraction and manufacturing to its end of life.

We are in more than a spot of bother and the time to act has already passed; we can but bolt the stable door to prevent further excursions by us vagrant animals. Charles Moore once said: “We humans make waste that nature can’t digest.” Very apt and true, and may I add that given the pace of the degradation of our ecosystem and environment, humans themselves won’t be able to digest what the planet is turning into, with its attendant consequences.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal