Plastic pollution has been a thorn in our side for a long time now. Just recently, tourist trawlers were temporarily banned in the Kalagachhi and Dobeki tourist centres due to widespread discarding of various plastic products by the tourists.
Incidents like this make it clear that unless and until we enact an absolute, blanket ban on the usage of plastic-based products, this problem will only get worse.
According to a report published by the World Bank, Bangladesh annual per capita plastic consumption in urban areas increased from 3kg in 2005 to 9kg in 2020, almost tripling in the span of 15 years. This has resulted in a situation where about 646 tonnes of plastic waste is collected in Dhaka alone on a daily basis, which is 10% of all waste generated in Bangladesh.
To make matters worse, only 37.2% of this waste is recycled.
This is especially concerning when taking into account the precarious position of Bangladesh in relation to the climate crisis and our degrading environmental integrity. The recent heat wave should have been indication enough of what is in store for our country if the world doesn't wake up and adopt decisive measures in order to battle against climate change.
Furthermore, the floods that are becoming commonplace in our country are a direct result of plastic pollution clogging up our waterways. We cannot continue down this path.
What we need is a blanket ban on the usage of plastic products. The authorities need to incentivize companies working on producing alternatives to plastic, and necessary changes have to be made to incentivize different businesses to adopt these alternatives.
There are far better uses of plastic that we as a nation can make, making roads for example, and the time of making every little thing out of plastic has ended.
