It was appalling to read the news item, “An uninhabited island of trash” (May 17), that mentioned the dismal condition of Henderson Island, a tiny, uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where researchers were astonished to find an estimated 38 million pieces of trash, most of it plastic, washed up on its beaches. . The fact that the island is a UNESCO World Heritage site makes the finding even more ironical. Our relation with plastics, considered unequivocally as a major enemy of the environment, needs revisiting. The continuous and unrelentless use of plastic and its accumulation across the world pose a serious threat to the environment. Although there are curbs and restrictions on their use in individual countries, all this goes in vain if implementation is tardy. A push for alternatives, awareness about the perils of using plastics, and, more importantly, strong community will are needed for any real changes to become visible on the ground. Environment and climate change is an area all nations have to focus their energies on and act expeditiously together.
Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
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