Insights
Written by Mahima Chowdhury
Myself, Mahima Chowdhury, a girl who grown-up in a small town is located in the remotest corner of the city named South Kattali, belonged to a middle-class family from a financial perspective, we have a semi paka house or tin shed house. Nowadays, the wave of
urbanization has come into my area but bringing lots of suffering for me and my family as well. Every year, during the rainy season, we’ve faced several problems. Firstly, heavy rainfall creates waterlogging surroundings. These heavy flows of water turn into our house and we live in this waterlogged home cause in this very common situation where could we go and how many days could we manage to stay over there? That’s why I and my family spent our lives within this polluted water into our house. My mother has cooked food for us, my brother played, even the sanitization process has been done over there. Imagine this humanitarian condition is how much lower than any other better lifestyle! So, now, come to the point behind this reality!
Firstly, there is a proper drainage system next to my house, but problem is, local people, don’t know what is the basic difference between dustbin and drain! City corporation and Chittagong Development Authority, are just doing their formal responsibilities here like making drain and so many infrastructures regarding this issue. But making social awareness isn’t their headache, we, the victims are suffering a lot. Almost every drainage system is somehow blocked because of plastic garbage. City Corporation has taken steps through
collecting regular garbage and trashes from door to door, which may reduce this waterlogging system but is this capacity to make awareness properly? I’ll attach a video of the real scenario regarding this featured story.
Secondly, this circumstance will make ecological imbalance widely. We’ve seen many cases recently in Cox’s Bazar during the COVID-19 lockdown period, some dolphins and baby whales are died only because of eating huge plastic trashes. These plastic trashes are devastating for our marine wildlife too. Once upon a time, in Bangladesh, fisherman’s net was covered full of different types of fishes’ cause rivers were fulfilled with the fish but what’s happening nowadays? Rivers are overloaded with plastic trashes rather than the fishes, so fishermen are losing their income source and fishes are losing the bio-diversity.
Thirdly, in every moment huge plastics mixed with our lands more specifically agricultural lands are polluted by this plastic garbage. So, soil loses its fertility for cultivating crops, ultimately our farmers are going to be the victim. According to Wikipedia, each plastic
takes up to approximately 400 years to decompose. Soil pollution is now another ecological disaster that is manmade by plastic trashes.
Fourth, the last point is Air Pollution through Plastic burning. The main source of plastic is petroleum. When plastic is burned, it is just a fossil fuel like coal, diesel, petrol. The burning of fossil fuels in the open-air causes serious environmental pollution, as a result, a large amount of Carbon dioxide, Sulphur, and Nitrogen containing Greenhouse gases, including various toxic vapors, are released into the air. This has a very negative impact on global warming. This point is too much alarming for humankind and environmental degradation as
well. Behind the strongest reason of Cancer.
Last but not least, instead of several problems, govt doesn’t take any strong action regarding this issue. During this Covid period, there is lots of plastic garbage increased alarmingly which is contaminated our maritime diversity, soil, and the entire environment. Face masks, PPE, Sanitizer bottles, Face shields, Injection syringes, packets of medicine’s and so on covid protective accessories or treatment purposes used plastic wastage has been created already but where is the effective managing system of this wastage? The ultimate sufferer will be the entire ecosystem! If we’re going to be saved from the wave of the Corona pandemic, surely someday we must have to pay for the injustice we’ve done with nature through this kind of extreme use of plastics!
Conclusively, I would like to recommend five sustainable solutions regarding this issue: Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle, Recover, and Re-design.
According to Google, in the world, only 9% of plastics will reproduce for re-use. Instead of various bad impacts, there are some inevitable positive impacts of plastics. Plastic offers some considerable benefits for the future of wildlife and humankind. Plastic materials play vital roles in medical science and these materials are very lightweight that’s why huge market demand for plastic materials. So if we can gather some appropriate knowledge about how to manage plastic garbage and re-use these trashes, it reduces the environmental hazards which occurred from plastic garbage.