Sir — This refers to the editorial, “Wages of sin” (June 6). Despite being fully aware that plastic is non-biodegradable, pervasively polluting and lethal to foraging bovines and marine creatures, we are strangely fooling ourselves that it is indispensable to one’s life and recycling will take care of the waste problem, when only 25 per cent of the collected garbage is getting processed.
First, the blame should go to our rulers and their advisors in aping the hedonistic West and having blindly introducing plastic and encouraging big industries around it. What a shame these myopic worthies couldn’t foresee that once the plastic genie is out of the bottle, there is no going back.
Either we strictly enforce “extended producer responsibility”, (or) ban plastic carry bags as Kenya and Rwanda did recently. Also, we must possess the discipline to use reusable carry bags, water bottles, plant leaves-based disposables and more importantly, segregate and compost organic wastes at the source ie household/community level so that only non-biodegradable wastes would be left to garbage collection, which can be recycled for road laying or pyrolytic oil generation or replacing coke in steelmaking (using waste tyres). We are yet to win the war on plastic and walk our eco-spiritual talk.