Did you know ?

Every single piece of plastic ever made (other than the ones burnt) still exists.
We have made more plastic products in the last decade than in the last century.
50% of the plastics we produce, we use once and throw away
We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.
Worldwide one million bags are used every minute i.e Annually 500 billion plastic bags
It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.

“Any conventional plastic product/item made out of polypropylene (PP), non woven polypropylene, multi layered co extruder polypropylene, poly ethylene (PE), poly vinyl chloride (PVC), high and low density poly ethylene (HDPE, LDPE), poly styrene (PS), nylon polyamides, poly terephthalate (PET), Poly(methyl methacrylate) is not biodegradable or compostable.”

“This review presents the hazards of incineration; open burning of plastics and effects of plastic in water and also a possibility of working out strategies to develop alternate procedures of plastic waste management.”

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India’s Situation with plastic.

In India, total generation of plastic waste is estimated to be approximately 5.6 million tonnes per annum
More than 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste are generated in the major cities in India every day, of which 6,000 tonnes remain uncollected and littered
Cities like Bangalore alone generates nearly 10,50,000 KG of plastic garbage a day

India’s contribution to plastic waste that is dumped into the Indian ocean every year is a massive 60%
Packaging represents the single-largest sector of plastics use and accounts for 35 percent of plastic consumption.
Plastic waste constitutes on average 9-10% of the local waste collected daily.

Non-woven bags are passed off as cloth bags due to texture, but they are essentially polypropylene bags.
Even paper cups have a layer of plastic in-between them to withstand temperature and be rigid.
Plastic ban is ineffective so far due to difficult enforcement and no proper alternatives.

It is common across India to find sewers and drainage systems clogged by single use plastic bags which cause severe cases of malaria and dengue due to the increased population of mosquitoes that breed on these flooded sewers.
This not only creates a litter problem but also leads to spread of multiple diseases.

Plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body— Tests show billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles, with 83% of samples found to be polluted.

Some of these compounds found in plastic have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.

As per an estimate, on an average, 30kg of plastic has been found in the guts of cows in the country and 20 cows die per day as a result of ingesting plastic bags and having their digestive systems clogged by them. One million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans around the world.