JHOLA CAMPAIGNING : DR. ANUBHA

35 years back we were producing only 2% of plastic what we are producing now

What have changed in these few decades?

Any guess!

It is not certainly the requirement!

IT IS THE HABIT

Human has changed his Habit in due course of time…

Being a certified general psychologist from Mont fort institute

Habit has a connection with our sub-conscious mind,

Any action introduced to first few times strikes our conscious mind and when our conscious mind gives it a ‘yes node’ it sink into the permanent or harden mode into the subconscious mind and we call it habit.

Single-Use-Plastic has provided a very easy life style to human

We have created a habit of Not to carry your bag as our nana naani-dada daadi used to carry for grocery and vegetables when they go out to market.

Using thamacole or fascinating plastic plates, katori, cutlery WHAT A EASY LIFE.

GOT A THUMBS UP by conscious mind that is a logical mind also sinked into the subconscious mind and in just 30 years we are now slave of plastic we cannot even imagine our life without the single use plastic which were very well existed just 30 to 35 years back.

I stared this journey 5 years back when I picked up Jhola Abhiyaan for anti-single use plastic BUT my fight is not exactly against single use plastic but it is against the human mind the MUNUS or addicted human mind for ‘ease of life’. My fight was against the modern age human mind who things the ease in life is the utmost thing in the world,

Against the human mind who is unwilling to see the upcoming to the environment disaster against the human mind who has chosen the ease of present day out of his bonded habits rather the disaster of future.

I presenting few numbers here though I am not very good with numbers 😉

World plastic production is around 350 million tones

To have assessment idea of this number it is roughly every human producing the the plastic equivalent of his weight per year. If you are well maintained with your BMI indext 65 kg so you are throwing 65 kg of plastic in the environment every year.

Type of plastic pollution

1. We produced more than 350 billion plastic bags just carry our vegetables and grocery

And the plight is only 1% of these carry bags went in to recycle

2. Plastic bottles: This ranked second, only in Europe 4.6 billion bottles used in year 2017. So one can estimate for the rest of world.

1. Packaging material: Readymade food rappers comes the third, of course present life style is deepening upon the factory-made food and the trend is increasing so the amount of pollution; though our ancient teachings and know-how always emphasise for freshly made food for good health.
2. Drinking straws and plastic cutlery: Again on the increasing trend, product designers and manufacturing companies are designing and producing new plastic products like plastic spoons, fork, knife and other fancy cutlery, as a big time addict & devotees we are blindly following and using these products. This making your life easy for few minutes on the other hand slowly & gradually making this planet a plastic dumping yard.

Only 5% plastic production is going for recycling rest 95% around the word is plastic pollution

And plastic production rate is increasing alarmingly

Hazards

• 650 ocean species are being affecting by plastic pollution in ocean.
• 50000 animals are being killed annually by direct consuming plastic bags.

Flood hazard induced by drainage problem: this is indirect but a very potential hazard has come up recently in the view of present scenario of the plastic pollution. Last almost from 10 years in Asia and other part of the world it is seen that for same amount of rain fall incidence of city floods are increasing rapidly. So how come it is possible that in same or lesser amount of rain-fall than the previous time inducing more city floods. The culprit is plastic waste. As we know plastic waste is a solid waste and by the natural flow from the higher gradient to lower gradient land based plastic pollution flows slowly and steadily towards ocean.  Considerably a good amount of plastic solid waste moves from city areas through city drainage system to small rivers to big rivers and then finally towards ocean.  So this journey of plastic solid waste continuously, increasingly clogging and

Broadly plastic pollution is categorized

1. Land based, and
2. Ocean based

But we cannot make a clear demarcation as according to findings 80% of land based plastic pollution later or sooner converts into Ocean based plastic pollution. But in the process of travelling from land based to ocean based plastic tend to decompose mostly by photo-degrade. In this chemical process it releases fatal chemicals. These chemicals mixing in our ground water and then our vegetables, dairy and meat products even in our salt.

In short nothing is untouched by plastic pollution so far it’s like invisible plastic inside us.

1. Health hazard: thousands of studies has been carried out to know the health affect by plastic pollution and the results are really very shocking.

• Contaminated food, ground water, meat, salt etc. has very potential reason of increasing many type of cancers, different type of organ failures and affecting mental health.

2. Slowing down the city drainage system. If our solid waste management is not very effective this movement of solid waste is reducing the capacity and efficiency of the city drainage system drastically. Hence in a normal rainfall drainage system of our city is so less efficient now that this takes a hell lot of time to wipe out the rain water. And causing a serious instant flood or long time flood if rain continues. As we have witnessed
3. Making our planet hotter: 14 numbers of plastic bags are made of hydrocarbon equivalent to run your car for a mile. Now you can imagine how many barrels of crude is being extracted to make such large amount of plastic products globally. We pumping lots of greenhouse gases just to make single use plastic products. Manufacturing, transportation, decomposition, recycling, solid waste management these all linked and related activates about the plastic products adding entropies to environments towards hotter planet.
4. Losing the beauty of the planet: Mostly countries comes in the category of unmanaged or partially managed solid waste system. According to survey only 20% countries are managing their waste efficiently. No need to say but important to remind that we are becoming beautiful planet to ugly planet just because of the tonnes on plastic are being dumped in the planet. If the trend continues; before year 2050 our ocean would have more plastic bottles and plastic bags than the number of fishes. We will have more solid waste landfills than the parks and children play areas. ‘Garbage patches’ or ‘gyres’ are the new terms coined for the plastic pollution in the ocean. There are many such patches identified where number of plastic pieces is more than 480000 per square kilometre these are named as plastic patches or gyres. There are new terms coining up to describe the amount of plastic waste in ocean such as ‘The Plastic Island’; of course not a picnic place!

Save our planet

Now in last part of my speech I have noted down few small things to save this plant from plastic menace. These are very simple conscious efforts which we can make and educate people it is just matter of small adjustments in habits.

Wake up call (Be supper conscious):

Human mind is so habitual in nature that human eat what is served to him. Earlier to 1970 we were producing only 1 percent of plastic what we are producing now. In last 45 years human has become so dependent on one-time-use plastic products that he has become big time addictive to use these products. Even mostly we know it is a hazard still we use it. It means we are educated about the hazards but bound to use it because we have become extremely habitual. We using it unconsciously as an addictive uneducated mind. For removing this habit we need to transform our system it requires great macro level leaderships as well as millions of micro level leaderships. A multilevel massive globally wakeup campaign should be planned encompassed with legal, social and education system involvement at each level. Every governance should involve themselves for this great cause. Because it is not a local issue it is primarily the biggest GLOBAL ISSUE now.

Find alternatives:

Plastic is a wonderful material with its effective properties that no other material has,    we can say there is no 100% replacement of plastic products. What we can do effectively that we can reduce down its use to a manageable level. Or we can reduce down the use of for the single-use plastic to a considerable level.  So here are alternatives

• Always carry or use reusable cloth bags for grocery and vegetable needs. You can forget it to carry initially so you can place such bags in your cars and vehicles permanently. If you would calculate for the long run these cloth bags would be much cheaper and effective in use.
• Always carry steel or metal cutlery with you, a set of steel spoon, steel straw, steel fork and knife takes a very small space of your bag. But think of this simple and small adjustment in your habit can reduce down the burden of tonnes of plastic on the planet.
• Carry your own water bottle, as I said water bottle is the second most plastic product of plastic pollution, if we make a habit of carrying our glass or metal water bottles with us can save to become billions of bottles to be as plastic pollution. Also by the research consuming food and water from plastic containers is not good for health, with photo-degrade micro-plastic traces found in such food, if exposed to sunlight for long time it become cancerous in nature. So stay healthy, carry your water with you.
• Cut down the consumption of factory made food, we cannot completely cut down this but yes we can reduce it, whenever possible you should carry homemade food with you. As I said above that plastic container food is not good for health, packaged food has regulators & stabilizers to increase its life cycle. Which certainly not in favour of your health. It’s always better for you and environment to eat an apple or banana if you are hungry on the road side than a packet of potato chips.

Be little educated and aware in selecting alternatives:

This is very important, to avoid mistakes while choosing the alternatives as it is found that in many places new type of material has been introduced for making bags which is called non-woven material. It is advertised as the bio-degradable but it is not. So go for only cloth bags, metal, and earthen products as an alternative. Also many manufacturing companies are making 100% bio-degradable polythene like bags with rice and potato extracts. But you need to do some personal research before going for these products as all available such bags are not 100% bio-degradable as claimed. So be little educated, be little aware, be little conscious and be little responsive for out adobe i.e. our BLUE PLANET as yet we don’t have any other planet to live in.

Why I chose jhola?

1. This jhola is made by women of economically weaker section of different self-help group. Promoting jhola we are saving the environment and helping people of economically weaker section
2. From ancient Indian history to modern history till the British came to India, India has been the leading textile industry exporter for the world. British ruined Indian textile industry in planned way to weaken the Indian economy, this region is very rich for cotton and jute, 90% jute production has remained in Bangladesh. Indian great cotton industry needs to be revise and revamp by introducing new cotton products and awareness about the benefits of cotton over synthetic material. our small abhiyaan would be a proven effort to help to boost Indian cotton industry which is struggling to flourish again after 75 years of the independence from British.
3. As I said in the beginning of my speech that my fight is not against single use plastic, my fight is mostly against the human habit. I want to create Jhola as symbol of breaking unconscious habit of over using single use plastic. If you carry a jhola with you it means you are aware you are not slave of using plastics, it means you not only stopping carry bags to bring home as well as it is a symbol that you are ALL AWAKE ALL AWARE OF ALL TYPE OF OVER USE OF PLASTICS IN SOCIETY. It means you are the agent of change, you are the ambassador of environment friendly habit, if you carry a Jhola it is a license that you can make aware other people, you can teach other adults and children against over use of plastic. It is exactly the I CHANGE to CHANGE THE WORLD”

I would love to recite 4 my slogan or our philosophy in

Jhola ho ghar-ghar

Saas leni ho agar

Dada-dadi nana-nani ki aadat apnayege

Jab bhi bahar jayenge

Jhola saath le ker jaayenge

 

Jai Hind

Dr. Anubha Pundir