PLASTIC BAN- THE GLOBAL SCENARIO

Not that the rivers are dry; at first they were filled with water and now with plastics. Plastic has become another source of addiction to all of us. Not just in India but worldwide. Thankfully, the Tamil Nadu Government has banned plastic and our PM Mr.Narendra Modi pledged to eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022, but what about the rest of the world??  Let’s take a look at it.

Why Ban plastic in first place?

Well there are endless reasons but let`s look at a few important ones:

Plastic bags pollute our land and water, are harms our health. It is just like we are using something which could very well lead us to our graves. And it’s not only the humans, even the wildlife and marine life is adversely affected. What did they do to deserve this?

Global scenario

“Every year, one trillion plastic bags for single use are used, equating to 2 million per minute.” This statistic explains it all. Plastic is just all over our planet and they are no alien species. We brought it to us now it is ready to kill us all. So many countries have taken and are taking measures to either reduce plastic usage drastically or to simply ban it for a variety of reasons, so let’s look at some.

The first country to do this is Denmark, which started in 1993, whereby charges are levied for the use of plastic bags. This made use of plastic drop by drop by 60% quite quickly.  Similarly, Ireland saw the usage of plastic bags reduce by 90% (over 1 billion bags) between 2001 and 2011 by imposing a plastic bag tax of 37 cents. This made use of plastic drop by drop by 60% quite quickly. Seems impressive right? But the first country to ban plastic was Bangladesh as they found plastic choked the drainage system during devastating floods. Few countries have done this to conserve wildlife like Australia which banned plastic locally in 2003 to protect the migrating whales in Tasmania. Countries in Africa like Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya and Botswana perhaps have the strictest ban on plastic right from 2008. In Kenya, it is done to stop the spread of Malaria. One great thing to note here is that most of these countries aren`t economically well developed or well-known countries but have still contributed immensely to the environment and few countries started using alternatives to plastic already especially in Latin America like Sao Paulo in Brazil and Argentina and Chile. So what did the ‘Superpowers’ do? There were few weak efforts taken by China. In USA, Places like Chicago, San Francisco, DC and Dallas have banned plastic. All these are steps to be appreciated but it isn`t really enough.

It is no secret that plastic bags cost our world a lot, and that we are still paying for the many years of plastic bag usage. People should commit to reducing how many bags they use, taking their own bags when they go shopping, for instance. Now however, concerted action is being taken to reverse that trend. More than 50 nations – from the Galapagos Islands to India and from Rwanda to China – are taking action to reduce plastic pollution. The UN has compiled a list of what each of these countries is doing – and the success they are having – in a new report called Single-use Plastics: “A Roadmap for Sustainability”. The aim of the report is to give governments a benchmark for effective policy making. While Governments do work towards helping us with that, we do also have to accept some personal responsibility towards saving the planet ourselves, because the change doesn`t begin always with Governments, it begins within every one of us. So #saynotoplastic let us be the change ourselves as the future generation
THANKS IMAGES .FACTS AND STATISTICAL DATA INTERNET