Plastic Waste
#FollowMeTo Has A New Destination, This Time It Is The City Of Plastic Waste – Mumbai
This viral picture of a woman standing in on a heap of plastic in Mumbai shows the grim reality of what all that is wrong with our planet today
New Delhi: Remember Instagram’s most famous couple – Moscow-based photographer Murad Osmann and his wife Natalia Zakharova, who came and conquered the world of social media through their #FollowMeTo series, where the couple posted incredible hand-in-hand photos as they travelled across the globe? Now, Photographer Ganesh Venare and Aishwarya Sharma, a medical student have tried to recreate the famous pose, only this time to showcase the unfiltered reality of Mumbai that is drowning in plastic waste.
A few days ago, when Ganesh Vanare and Aishwarya Sharma saw huge piles of garbage at the Juhu beach, they were so shocked that they immediately decided to strike a pose in the Instagram famous #FollowMe style. Today, the photo that has gone viral has received more than 46,559 likes and counting and has been widely shared on social media.
See The Viral Post
There was another picture of the beach that was filled with plastic waste.
Every year, Mumbai paints the same sorry picture for the residents in the monsoons. Recently, when hide tides arrived in the city, the sea spewed tonnes of garbage on Marine Drive and every other place and beaches. Witnessing the apathy of their beloved city, many people expressed their anger on social media, but the fact is that this is also the result of the indiscriminate actions of the citizens.
To overcome the challenges of plastic waste, Maharashtra government imposed a ban on single-use plastic items on June 23. But till the citizens comply with the ban and rectify the wrongs of the past such grim pictures will keep making headlines.
After all, Mumbai generates 9,000 metric tonnes of garbage every day that goes into the overflowing landfills of the city. One of the major landfills in the city Deonar is about 90-year-old and is on the verge of collapsing. Another landfill at Mulund has been functional since 1968 and is also way past its lifespan.
Plastic Pollution: The Way Forward
Here are a few things that can be done by individuals to beat plastic pollution at their level –
- Replace plastic bags with cotton, jute or canvas bags
- Replace plastic straws with paper or steel straw
- Replace plastic bottles with steel or a glass bottle
- Replace plastic cups, plastic/styrofoam plates, bowls, spoons and forks with eco-friendly alternatives available in the market
- Replace plastic gift wrapping with old paper or newspaper wrapping
- Instead of using plastic decorations opt for upcycling (the process of turning old, unwanted things into new items)
These changes might be small but can go a long way in saving the planet from drowning in plastic waste. Currently, India produces a whopping 5.6 million tonnes of plastic waste in a year and is also the 12th biggest plastic polluter in the world. So, the need of the hour is to do everything possible to shun plastic and cut down its adverse impact on the environment.
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies.