Last Wednesday, I had the misfortune of being out and about on the outer Ring Road in the evening hours on the stretch between Okhla and Nehru place. It was Ram Navami, and the streets leading to Kalkaji Mandir were gaily bedecked with flowers, brightly-dressed devotees, tents serving free food and more. Stuck in a traffic jam that refused to open up, I was in no mood to appreciate the festivities. Instead, at a standstill outside a busy food-stall serving free prasaad to devotees, I was horrified to find everyone throwing their used plates and glasses by the roadside. We inched ahead, but wherever I looked, all I could see was polystyrene (thermocol) plates strewn along the pavements. Unable to bear it any more, I accosted a couple of stragglers who were dumping their plates in the same heap.
Why did they not throw their waste in dustbins, I asked mildly. The two men scratched their heads, looked around and replied: “there aren’t any dustbins around… Anyway, the municipality will clean this mess tomorrow!” The traffic stubbornly refused to budge and neither did they. I felt compelled to carry on this scintillating conversation. “Did you know,” I asked them, “that the thermocol plates you’ve just thrown will stay just like this for 100 years — maybe even more?” The two men stared at me silently.
“Disposable plates are necessary for public events,” said one of them indignantly, “they’re hygienic, convenient and cheap!” It’s not as if, they argued, that they were the only people who used thermocol. “Don’t you also use the same glasses and bowls when you have parties or go on picnics?” they demanded to know. “Stand outside any big school and you’ll see food being served in these very plates! If thermocol is so bad, then why don’t schools educate your children about it?” they said. Of course they had a point. Schools should, and I don’t really know if they do, tell students about the perils of loading our landfills with non-biodegradable waste.
Environmental groups like the Earth Resource Foundation say styrofoam products make up approximately 25 to 30 per cent of space in landfills around the world. Nobody has lived long enough to say how long it actually takes for polystyrene to biodegrade, but it is believed that when it does degrade, toxic chemicals are released into the environment, which could end up polluting the groundwater. And while it stays in landfills, animals that scavenge food from there end up eating polystyrene scraps that clog their digestive systems and choke them to death. And it isn’t just stray animals that could choke — last year during the monsoons, thermocol plates and glasses choked up Mumbai’s drains.
The men and I were still in a gridlock, in more ways than one. They glared at me while heatedly discussing the injustice of it all. “People like you make the mess,” said one, coolly ignoring his plate still lying at the top of the rubbish heap, “and expect people like us to clean up after you!”
The jam suddenly opened. We moved on, passing temple after temple bedecked with flowers inside and dirty stacks of thermocol plates outside. Whatever happened to the traditional leaf plates and terracotta glasses that we all once used? It seems they’ve disappeared in less than a decade. As I took a last look at a festering heap of rubbish and imagined it looking exactly the same after centuries, I realised that the time to change is now. But how? I for one don’t know where to start.
