Delhi Is The Largest Contributor To India's 25,940 Tonnes Of Plastic Waste Every Day And Govt Is Just Sitting Idle

On World Environment Day, observed on June 5 each year, India will host ¡°Beat Plastic Pollution¡± -- an event in association with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in New Delhi. But beyond the veil of rhetoric, Indian cities are dirty and most of these generate thousands of tonnes of plastic waste daily which not only pollute the land but also choke our oceans.

AP

Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), a statutory organisation, which keeps an eye on pollution, said in its 2015 report that as many as 60 tier-I and tier-II Indian cities roughly account to the generation of 4,059 tonnes of plastic waste per day.

And a pan India figure for this goes up to 25,940 tonnes of plastic waste every day.

Therefore, heaps of waste stinking in the corners of the streets of the metropolitan cities is a saddening reality, given that so many claims have been made about making Indian cities clean and green and a systematic collection of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste.

The vehicular and industrial pollution pollutes air but plastic waste not only pollutes land, it also ruins rivers and oceans.

Currently, non-biodegradable waste, mostly plastic, has choked oceans in many parts of the world and has tremendously affected the aquatic life.

Top cities generating most plastic waste

CPCB report 2015 states that Delhi (689.52), Chennai (429.39), Mumbai (408.27), Bangalore (313.87) and Hyderabad (199.33) are the cities producing maximum amount of plastic waste in the country.

Cities generating least plastic waste

While the metropolitan cities and tier-II and tier III cities are highly polluting, the smaller towns and hinterlands believe in doing their bit to save the environment. Kavaratti (0.24), Daman (1.16), Dwarka (1.45), Panaji (1.12) and Gangtok (2.33) generate the least amount of plastic waste in India daily.

How big a threat plastic is

Platforms like Paris Climate Change Summit discuss carbon emission and its effects on the environment, but pollution in oceans caused due to rampant dumping of plastic waste is life-threatening.

Reuter

One can imagine the scale of the problem by reading these details. Roughly, 500 billion plastic bags are used around the world in a year and around 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped in oceans each year, which comes roughly one truck of waste every minute. Plastic bottles are the biggest contributor in waste piling up as 1 million bottles are bought every minute throughout the world. Fifty per cent of plastic waste is single-use or disposable. Plastic waste contributes to 10 per cent of the total waste generated in the world.

Ochki Cyclone alone dumped 80 tonnes of plastic on Indian sea shores

AFP

A classic case of what you give is what you get.

In 2017, Ockhi cyclone alone dumped roughly 80 tonnes of plastic on shores of various coastal states. In his reply, MoS Mahesh Sharma said, ¡°Ockhi Cyclone resulted in agglomeration of plastic debris along the coasts of Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Gujarat etc., particularly along the major beaches of Mumbai. It has been estimated that about 80 tonnes of waste from the Ocean has been dumped on the city¡¯s coastline due to Ockhi Cyclone.¡±

The central government had no emergency plan since, ¡°Clearance of such accumulated plastic debris is being managed by the respective State Governments/Union Territories¡±.

Plastic products still produced in large numbers

In his written reply, MoS Sharma cited, first, the National Accounts Statistics 2015 of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which estimated the average production and consumption of plastic products between 2011-12 and 2015-16 at 707 million metric tonnes (MMT) per year.