Jacques-Yves Cousteau Jacker remarked that “water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans”. Last week I visited Dara Shikoh Garden in Bijbehara, a famous tourist spot. It is 40 km from Srinagar. What I observed there was that people are not at all friendly with mother earth. Plastic waste lay littered everywhere. Plastic damages the soil and ruins its fertility. There is not a single place on this blue planet where plastic material has not reached. In Kashmir, it has become a culture to use plastic material for everything. It will have dire consequences for all of us and for our environment.
We take all the resources to sustain our life – water, soil, air, minerals, metals for industries, fuel for transport – from nature. Human society derives the maximum benefits from the environment and at the same time humans are most responsible for the environment’s degradation. Humans are consuming natural resources and ejecting pollutants in the natural environment at an ever-increasing pace.
The situation is grim all over the globe. Everyday more and more plastic is accumulating in the oceans and other water bodies. As a result, marine creatures are dying at rapid rates. Many species of turtles, penguins, fish are on the verge of extinction. It has been estimated that more than one lakh terrestrial animals die every year due to ingesting of plastic bags. I have observed animals like cows, dogs, donkeys mistakenly ingest plastic stuff and die as a result.
Around the world, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute. Every year, all over the world, people are using more than five trillion disposable plastic bags every day. As per scientists a single plastic bag takes one thousand years in the process of its decomposition. The love of packaged goods and throwaway culture has turned this beautiful planet into a vast garbage ground.
There is an urgent need to create awareness among people to protect the environment and to avoid usage of plastic. The UNEPS has already recommended ban on plastic bags all over the globe. We must use alternatives like cloth bags and paper bags instead of plastic bags. If we are purchasing plastic, we must reuse it. We must avoid drinking bottled water which contributes largely to plastic pollution. The government must put a ban on the use of plastic. All this can prevent plastic pollution to a large extent. It is our collective responsibility to save the environment and the administration should also take necessary measures to protect the environment. To encapsulate all this with the beautiful saying of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): “If the Final Hour comes while you have a palm stalk in your hands, and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it.”

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Tariq Mantoo