This is twenty first century and our mother earth is rapidly progressing towards Apocalypse! It is true, environmentalists are trying to aware us about the pollutants responsible for it and a major partner is plastic. Even Mount Everest is polluted by plastic containers left by the mountaineers. It is endangering the life in ocean, the air we breathe in and the water we drink. We use over 380 million tons of plastic each year and almost half of it is single use plastic. The most grievous problem is disposal of plastic waste. We can recycle it, but it does not reduce the problem. Countries like Sweden and Denmark claim that they are free of plastic problem, where, in fact, they incinerate most of the plastic waste and recycle less than fifty percent, as it is very expensive. It is better to ban the use of plastic to try to reduce it. It has been seen worldwide, that almost six times the quantity of plastic is burned each year compared to what is recycled. It has been the practice of rich countries like USA, Japan, Canada and UK to export their plastic waste to Asian countries. However, in 2018, China, India and Malaysia refused to accept the trash and sent it back. There is some talk of non-polluting plastic or bioplastic. Bioplastics made of corn, soy or any staple foods actually deprive poor people by increasing the food price. Sometimes bioplastics like polyethylene (PE) shopping bags made of sugarcane or soy are not biodegradable. Even the biodegradable ones need big machinery and high temperature for starting the degradation process. It costs high energy which enhances the energy problem of the world. The desirable process is degradation of bioplastics by composts available in our homes. Such compounds like Polylactic acid (PLA) used in Styrofoam cups and poly hydroxy alkanoates (PHA) used for sutures are rare and require right condition for use. Thus, the ideal situation for bio plastic use should be to use those which are made from food-waste like potato or banana peels and easy to decompose as ordinary home compost. Secondly, we should reduce our single use plastic consumption by taking certain steps like using local market instead of big shopping malls, carrying cloth bags instead of plastic container and stainless- steel water bottle instead of plastic bottle, so that ultimately industrial production will decrease.
