Alchemy was the talk of the town in 15th century Europe. The who’s who of the scientific fraternity was hunched over tables trying to create gold and silver using science and sorcery. But their attempts landed them nowhere near the material that kicked off a revolution some hundreds of years later. It was polymer, a material that is durable, pliable, light and relatively inert. The first synthetic polymer, or plastic as we know it, was created in the early 20th century. Since then, contemporary alchemists have been cutting up and repurposing hydrocarbon molecules into thousands of materials that make up the plastics family. Everything from bottles to money is now plastic.
But the magic material has a flipside—plastics do not decompose naturally. Its pervasive dominance means that it is now embedded in, quite literally, every habitat in the world—even in the most isolated eco-system. One example is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a 600-sq km floating island of plastic waste in the North Pacific Ocean. Less spoken about are the hundreds of thousands of landfills, drains and rivers choked with plastic waste, especially in the developing world. Lately, another worrying aspect of plastics has been gaining attention—minute particulate plastics, or micro-plastics. When exposed to ultra-violet solar rays, water and salts, plastic can deteriorate and fragment into miniscule particles. They can be ingested by simple life forms and enter the food chain. Such microplastics are also manufactured to be used in several consumer products. With the alarm over the unmitigated rise of plastics reaching a fever pitch, the theme for the World Environment Day-2018, held every year on June 5, is plastic pollution.
Earlier this year, while signing the agreement to host the UN-led World Environment Day, India’s Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan declared: “It is the beginning of the end of plastic menace.” But a look at India’s own track record when it comes to managing plastic raises doubts about the proclamation….ReadMore