Reducing plastic use

Plastics have become an integral part of our everyday life. The world purchases around one million plastic bottles every minute and uses one billion plastic bags every hour. Low cost, durability, light weight, and ease of processing have made plastics very popular. However, the widely used plastic comes at the cost of our environment. The scale of plastic pollution has become alarming with tonnes of plastic waste existing almost everywhere posing a serious threat to humans and destroying Nature and damaging environment. We do not know exactly how long plastic products take to degrade, but we know that once they are in our soil, rivers and oceans, it is quite impossible to clean them up.
A recent report prepared by the World Bank reveals that the use of plastic in the urban areas of Bangladesh has increased three times in the last 15 years. This is so alarming for us and our environment. We often see one-time plastic glasses in various offices and educational institutions for our convenient use. But they are very harmful for our health. There is a health risk as well as environmental pollution. We should try our level best to reduce the use of plastic from our life.
Although the production and use of polythene in Bangladesh were banned in 2002, single-use polythene bags still rule the market. In order to reduce plastic pollution, we all have an important role to play, from making small lifestyle changes such as shopping with reusable bags to raising our voices for more progressive and sustainable policies. We need to conduct awareness campaigns to convince consumers of the need to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics and encourage them to use the alternative options available for poly bags.

Fahim Faysal,
Student of North South University, Dhaka,
faysalfahim1971@gmail.com