The Planet is Bulging with the People and Plastics!

World has produced till now nearly 10 billion tonnes of plastic from 1950 when the commercial production of plastic began. 70% of it has gone into waste and most of that discarded plastic (waste) has been resting in the landfills, oceans and the ecosystem. That's what UNEP's data states.

That sound like statements worth reading and discarding, but think about this: Once in the environment, plastic slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments, known as micro- and nano-plastics. It can take hundreds or even thousands of years for such plastic, which itself contains thousands of chemicals, to degrade into its basic natural components. That's because plastics are made up of repeating units of tightly bonded carbon-rich molecules, which makes them very difficult to break down.

And here comes a shock! These nano-particles of plastics have now been found in animal meat, fish and aquatic species in the ocean and milk that we drink including our mothers' milk . There is indication that they have also reached human's brain and are altering the way we think! Calling it as plastic pollution is like calling poison as toxic drink! Both are fatal to the life on the earth

The first international treaty to combat plastic pandemic was negotiated during the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (called INC-5) in the Republic of Korea in the city of Busan.

The day before INC-5 officially began, youth from 30 different countries gathered for a full day of discussions on what they expect to see from the treaty at the Youth and Stakeholder Assembly on mega problem of Plastic.

However, there have been usual set of the activities and proposals by youth making one believe that youth are simply following 9 or made to follow) the negotiators without being original and without exploring out-of-box solutions. They were engaged before the start of negotiations in art exhibitions, music programmes and making suggestions like:

• Inclusive and active stakeholder and rights holder engagement is crucial.
• The treaty must focus on the whole life cycle of plastics.
• Youth need to be consulted.

Youth are being deployed for decorative purposes . Time has come to explore potential of youth from universities to seek nature solutions, bio-plastics, molecular breakdowns processes using enzymes, AI and other digital technologies to explore unfathomable answers and so on.

Youth need to understand that plastics are made from fossil fuel and hence add carbon to the ecosystem, the way emissions add to the atmosphere. Plastic Treaty and Paris climate Agreement are the two sides of the same coin!

Green TERRE Foundation's Smart Campus Cloud Network (sccnhub.com) encourages youth to make campus as living-laboratory to think out-of-box. It has developed campus practices and guidelines for "Single-Use-Plastic-Free Campus". It encourages students to undertake R & D for bio-plastics. We need transformative actions with speed and not simple transition at the snail-speed. END