"Bad guys" in Environmental battle: Plastic Bags

One of the most often complained about “bad guys” in the environmental battle is plastic bags. Plastics are everywhere, almost everything we buy from grocery stores, pharmacies, vegetable markets and others are wrapped in plastics. Environmentalists say that plastic bags cause pollution both in their production and as landfill waste after they’re discarded.More than just a black,white,blue,green and other colours, it has a lot more complication.

Some of the striking facts of plastics:

• Plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a petroleum product.  Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption.
• It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down.
• Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photo-degrade- breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways.  They then enter the food-web when animals accidentally ingest them.
• Only 1-3% of plastic bags are recycled worldwide.
• Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die each year by ingesting plastic bags.  Not only that, these poor animals suffer a painful death.  The plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death (Postconsumers, 2013)

Plastic wastes in open dump sites

Bhutan despite having stringent laws and policies on environmental conservation, the use of plastics accounts the highest among wastes composition. Everything we import has plastic wrappers and the people use it everywhere every time. The rise in plastic mounds in landfills and open spaces is a concerning environmental issues. The import of plastic bags were once banned in Bhutan, but it has become almost inevitable, ergo it is still in wide use.

For a small country like Bhutan with healthy environments intake, the use of plastics can be drastically decreased if well taken care individually. The plastic bags are used mostly in carrying vegetables. Even for a half kilogram of chilli we tend to demand a separate plastic bag which can actually be carried along other vegetables in single plastic bags. Every time we go for shopping, we bring in lots of plastic bags which land up in our dustbins. Such practices can be stopped if we use some permanent reusable shopping bags. 

Using durable shopping bag

This evening I was just walking to vegetable market carrying my reusable shopping bag of B-Mobile. I bought about seven different types of vegetables and few grocery items for my mess. If it was not for my shopping bag, I would have to put those things in 10 to 12 separate plastic bags. I told myself, 'wow! this is a great environmental saviour atleast to individual ground'. If everyone of us carry our own reusable shopping bags while walking to market, it would rescue thousands of plastic bags every time. For an instance, if 350 students of CNR carry their own reusable bags for shopping in their twice visit to market weekly, they would save around 3500 plastic bags weekly( one person would use atleast 10 plastic bags for shopping in a week). This would not only decrease the waste of plastics, but also save the non-renewable energy in production of plastics in manufacturing industries (The amount of petroleum used to make 1 plastic bag would drive a car about 11 meters)

Green Road Project at plastic wastes' rescue in Bhutan

Despite all those concerns, to our rescue the Green Road Project uses plastic wastes to pave the road mixed with bitumen. The public-private project has already done its project trial in Thimphu with the use of plastic wastes from the landfill. If successful, the project has a promising dream to use all the plastic wastes produced in Bhutan in the pavement of the roads. By doing this the project hopes to both reduce the amount of plastics going into landfills by upto 40% as well as significantly reduce the amount of bitumen, a vicious petroleum product, needed for laying the roads. If the project goes as planned it hopes to consume almost all the national plastic wastes into the pavement of the road. Let's hope the Green Road Project goes well as to maintain our focus on environmental stewardship in the journey of growing pains of modernization.