How The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 Are Also The Great Indian Plastic Pollution Festival
Election Commission of Indian ECI has urged political parties to avoid use of single-use plastic during polls. PVC is a major health and environmental risk. Less than 1 per cent of PVC is recycled and rest ends up in landfills releasing toxic chemicals into the soil.
Elections and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic are inseparable. As the mother of all elections approach, hoardings with faces of politicians have plagued the cities all across the country. And the problem is only slated to get worse.
PVC is a major health and environmental risk. Keeping the hazards in view, the Election Commission of Indian (ECI) has urged political parties to avoid use of single-use plastic during polls.
The EC has suggested that all political parties avoid PVC in their campaign material, considering ¡°the long-term deleterious impact of materials such as plastics, polythene, etc. on the life-giving and life-sustaining environment.¡±
BCCL
Hoardings have already lined up outside headquarters of political parties in New Delhi.
In India, 90 per cent of advertising materials are printed on PVC and close to 216,000 tonnes of flex banners are printed on the polymer annually, per ICRA, a Moody¡¯s company.
According to information released under RTI, between April 2017 and March 2018, the BJP alone spent Rs147.10 crore on outdoor publicity. This includes billboard and ads painted on walls.
BCCL
What makes the situation worse is that less than 1 per cent of PVC is recycled and rest of it ends up in landfills, releasing toxic chemicals into the soil.
The Central government has set a 2022 target for a ban on single-use plastics. State governments are acting upon these carcinogen-carrying materials by creating awareness and cutting their use. A report by Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), 13.4 million tonnes of single-use plastics is manufactured every day.