Battling Plastic Pandemic The Role of Global Community

Modern technology has given humanity the products that made our life easy and convenient, but not necessarily healthy. Plastic is one such product.

Plastic is cheap and incredibly versatile with properties that make it ideal for many applications. It is light in weight and can be conveniently converted into different shapes and sizes. Due to these properties, it has a wide range of applications like food packaging & storage, automobiles, aerospace, health care, and household items to name a few.

But one of the major concerns is the non-biodegradability of plastics especially, single-use plastic that ends up in dump yards, landfills, and oceans. It remains in the biosphere for endless years. To what extent and how deep the plastics in their various forms enter our ecosystem and our bodies is frightening to think and even yet to be understood well. The consequences of the recent findings on the existence of microplastics in human blood, nerves, and muscles are unthinkable. Today, it has become one of the most alarming environmental hazards.

Youth represent the generation that not only formulates the principles but also transforms them into actions. And the Campus represents the laboratory for the youth to explore, pilot, and try the ideas for healthy and sustainable solutions to our developmental imperatives. Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN) a flagship project of TERRE Policy Centre utilizes the potential of youth and the campus is currently facilitating more than 350 colleges and universities to mainstream the future policy-makers and policy-implementers in implementing the SDGs.

It is meant to 'incubate' the plans and create 'start-ups' to contribute towards making your campus Smart. Campuses are considered as micro-plasma of our planet. Any action that would make our planet Smart will contribute to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

SCCN has launched the guidelines for a Single-Use Plastic Free campus. These guidelines are part of efforts to encourage the universities and colleges to adopt policies and practices towards a cleaner and plastic-free campus. The guidelines are also meant for research by students on alternatives to plastic and related subjects

The time to take a stance against plastic pollution has come. People are rallying in ever-greater numbers around the world, protesting the obscene amounts of plastic waste that are strewn on beaches, tossed in landfills, clogging the oceans. Responsible actions have also started taking place by people from various parts of society.

2021 Earth Day on 22 April has a theme of ' Restore the Earth.' TERRE under its SCCN project would be organizing the virtual dialogue on ' Plastic Pandemic-silent killer'. Erik Solheim, Dia Mirza, and Afroz Shah would be taking part in this dialogue which would be moderated by Dr Rajendra Shende.

Dia Mirza is an Indian actress who is also the brand ambassador of the United Nations Environment Programme and is working relentlessly to educate people on the need to improve and change their behavior towards clean air, water, and wildlife protection. Dia Mirza is already known for replacing plastic from her life, she's using a toothbrush that is not made of plastic but is made from bamboo. She also doesn't rely on plastic water bottles, the actor believes in refilling and reusing bottles for quenching her thirst, even in plush hotels. Thus, setting an example among the youth that it is individual efforts that matter the most when it comes to solving such global issues.

Afroz Shah is a young Indian lawyer from Mumbai, synonymous with the world's largest beach clean-up project. He's the man behind the clean-up of Mumbai's Versova beach and was awarded the UN's top environmental accolade – Champions of the Earth award in 2016 for his work. Afroz has been setting examples for people from across the globe on how collective effort can actually bring some big change.

Erik Solheim, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations while giving an interview says 'Plastic, till a few years ago, was considered very good, very sweet and very nice, almost a miracle material. It is still so if properly reused. It is true that we started too late but the plastic production saw a spurt only in the last 10 years. The growth was not that phenomenal 15 years ago. So, at least we have started. In the last couple of years, we have brought the issue to the global forefront.' Therefore, it can be considered that plastic pollution, not something restricted only to some countries, but it has now become a global issue which has to be taken up by all the countries.

Making our life plastic-free, therefore, is a much-needed but certainly not an easy task, as plastic has become part of our daily life. However, there is an urgency to undertake such activities, and is indeed doable, if implemented in stages with suitable alternatives and its responsible use.