by Marium Ibrahim
 |
| Is the world turning into plastic? Photo credit: torange.biz |
At this point there is so much plastic in our oceans that even our sea salt has plastic mixed into it. By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
According
to estimates by the Pakistan Environment
Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), almost 55 billion plastic bags are manufactured
and used in Pakistan annually, with an average of 397 bags used per person in a
year.
A local
shopkeeper told me he spends about Rs20,000 a month on purchasing plastic bags.
Even people who come in for just a pack of chips want a bag to carry it in.
Many customers even insist on different bags for different items. Since plastic
bags are less expensive than paper ones for shopkeepers to buy, they take the
more ‘cost-effective’ route to fulfill this demand.
I heard
a story of a small boutique in Karachi that had started to use recycled newspaper
bags. Apparently, the owner of the store received so much negative feedback
about the environmentally friendly bags (the customers complained they did not
seem high-end enough) that she had to move back to branded plastic ones.
Today half of the debris on Clifton beach is plastic. The
plastics we dump in the sea pollute waters and are not only a serious threat to marine life, but their toxins also
ultimately end up in humans.
The
government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recently banned the manufacture of non-biodegradable products, along with the
Balochistan government, which banned the sale, use and production of plastic bags.
It is unclear as yet how well these bans have been imposed. The Pak-EPA also
recently issued a ban on plastic bags in Islamabad, but this
ban has yet to be ensured by the Federal Government. However,
such a ban has worked in Kenya,
which imposed fines up to €32,000 or a prison sentence of up to 4 years for
anyone caught with a plastic bag. Despite some protests to this ban, “the Kenyan
high court judged
that the environment is more important than their commercial interests.” Kenya
follows 40 other countries that have banned, partially banned, or taxed the use
of plastic bags. Why is it that I find it so hard to imagine such a ban being
implemented (and ensured) in Karachi?
Maybe
because there have been so many instances already of our government choosing
commercial interests over the environment. In August, the mayor of Karachi distributed biodegradable plastic bags among
citizens on the streets, in a campaign about keeping the country clean. It was
no doubt a good cause, but there was also corporate sponsorship involved from a
large multinational company, which leads one to wonder whether the motivation
would remain the same without commercial interests involved.
The
recent example of the issue of cutting down mangrove trees in Karachi leads me
to answer no. The mangrove forests are already under threat as a result of untreated waste and industrial
pollution, and were declared protected in 2010. Despite this, there are plans to cut
down around 800 mangrove trees to construct an LNG import terminal. Even the
Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) lacks the appropriate responses to the issues that this raises. All in the
name of “development.”
It seems
like the general mindset is that more waste and environmental destruction you
create, the more “forward” and “developed” you will be. At this rate, the only
kinds of trees we are going to be left with will be plastic, and plastic trees
cannot protect us from the tides.
