COVID 19 AND PLASTIC POLLUTION
Living in Pakistan, the word ‘problem’ is not an alien one. And when asked to think about one problem in your society that you care about, you don't need more than 10 minutes to come up with a long list. But the “real problem” begins when you start thinking of the solutions. Whenever it comes to social issues, everyone jumps onto a bandwagon and starts cursing the society, when every single person (yes! every single one) is equally responsible for the same issues.
From that long list of problems, one of the problem that I am concerned about is “Ever Increasing Plastic Pollution due to COVID’’.
Plastic pollution in Pakistan was already at its peak, when COVID outbreak started worsening it in the beginning of 2020. No doubt, plastic products have played a significant role in saving people by providing protective equipment but at the same time due to the lack of awareness among people regarding waste segregation, and non-existence of proper waste disposal system by government, large amounts of ‘used plastic face masks’ end up on streets and eventually oceans, which kills thousands of marine animals and also poses a health hazard to municipal workers”.
I conducted a small scale survey, which shows alarming results.
More than 50% people said, they use plastic containing masks every single day. While a considerable population said that they use it every time they have to go out. (That means more than 20 masks per person every month)
The more burning question was, are these masks properly disposed off?
Although a large majority says that they already knew that covid masks are categorised as infectious waste, there were still more than 80 % people who do not follow the waste segregation protocol.
Here are a few pictures that I took:
The surprising part is that all these pictures were taken within an area of 10 metres, exactly beside a huge government installed garbage drum.
According to a research conducted in December 2020, it was estimated that 1.56 billion face masks will have entered oceans in 2020 .
Operations Director of OceansAsia says, “Plastic pollution kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and turtles, over a million seabirds, and even greater numbers of fish, invertebrates and other animals each year”
This problem is a very large scale issue, and when thinking of a solution, the idea seems pretty daunting. But change starts from one person. If each one of us, makes an effort to be a part of the change, only then can we fight the issue of plastic pollution.
