Travelling & polluting

Those who travel to Barishal via river have reasons to be horrified to see how passengers and launch company employees are polluting our rivers. We are dumping plastic bottles, plastic bags, plastic cups and cigarette butts in rivers and these are contributing to bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases. It takes up to 1,000 years for a single plastic bottle to decompose in water. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a 19th century American writer, said, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." But, we are leaving this world to our next generation polluted.

May I humbly submit a few suggestions to minimise detrimental effects to our rivers? 1) Launch companies should provide trash containers in key points for collecting plastic and other dumping materials; 2) Passengers should be advised to use trash containers and not to throw trash in river; 3) Fine should be introduced for failure to collect trash or for dumping plastic materials in river; and 4) Media campaign should be launched to sensitise people about polluting any space where they live or move through.

Tanvir F Chowdhury

Banani, Dhaka