The toffee wrapper, tooth brush or broken pencil case end up in my dustbin at home. Where does it go to from there?
Garbage that is not being recycled, but is being dumped elsewhere (far away from our homes) is the biggest Environmental Damage that we are contributing to every day.
We are letting the “Garbage Monster” take over. There is overflowing filth in our streets. The “landfills” where our domestic garbage is being dumped is growing. These “landfills”, one day, will be bigger than the city we live in. Tall peaks of garbage at these sites run for miles in almost every Indian city resemble a whole new planet.
From lakes to rivers, we have dumped garbage everywhere, we have not even spared the oceans. From Juhu to Puri, Marina to Goa, the one thing in common is ‘garbage’. With one of the longest coastlines in the world and a unique beach terrain in almost every state, we must be proud of our beaches and mighty oceans. But instead we choose to ignore and exploit it. A visit to the beach includes leaving behind some garbage. What we throw into our lakes and rivers is washed into our oceans. We have been adding so much garbage out there that now there are tiny particles of polythene floating in the blue waters.
Causing death
Sea turtles and other marine organisms confuse the colourful floating garbage to be “Jelly Fish” or other food type and ingest them. In the process they die. It is estimated that 100,000 sea birds die every year due to ingestion of plastic debris from the oceans. Researchers coined a term “Plastic Soup” to depict the large chunks of floating garbage moving freely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. “Plastic Soup” refers to garbage debris being held together by the underlying ocean currents and it is steadily growing as we keep dumping. It is estimated to be two times the size of Continental USA.
Imagine a mighty ocean with giant blue waves, and even bigger whales with dolphins and sea turtles swimming around. In this picturesque, pristine environment is a large junk of floating garbage... because of us. You and I decided not to recycle and to continue using polythene and dumping it. So, today, from the lake to the ocean and even outer space, there is garbage. One day, plants will produce garbage and taps will flow garbage, until that day we will never realise.
What you can do
Identify a “Lake/River or Beach “ in your city. Walk up there with your diary-pen and camera, if you have one.
On the banks of the river/lake or at the beach visually scan anything you can see.
Click photos or write a descriptive note on the kind of garbage that you see.
Try to think of the source of this garbage. Eg: Toothpaste sachet would come from a home, old tyres would have come from the nearby mechanic and so on.
Make a detailed report on the kind of garbage at the site and the source.
Share this with your friends and sensitise them. Let us stop future dumping of waste.
The “Soup” has enough ingredients already and is simmering, let’s stop cooking it further before it explodes.
In the Great Pacific
The Great Pacific garbage patch is also described as the Pacific trash vortex. It is a gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean. The patch is characterised by very high levels of plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.
