People use polythene knowing full well it is harmful

In a country as small as Bangladesh with an area of 147,570 square kilometres and a population size of 180 million, 8th largest in the world, the per capita use of nine kilogram plastic unfolds a terribly tragic vista the country is heading for. An update of this 2020 estimate is most likely to paint a grimmer picture of the use of plastic and polythene. Even the single-use polythene bags contribute to 821,250 tonnes of plastic waste annually. Now if the unsafe disposal of polythene continues at this rate, what happens 50 or 100 years later is dreadful to think of. The nation will get buried under its discarded polythene waste. Agricultural lands will go underneath the swarms of polythene bags and sheets and water bodies including the rivers and the Bay of Bengal will get severely clogged. 

In this context, the Environment and Social Development Organisation (ESDO), a private environmental body, has come up with interesting revelation about the use of poly bags. Not less than 63 per cent people in this country use polythene even though they are quite aware of its deleterious impact on the environment. At the same time, 55 per cent retail traders have expressed their willingness to use any alternative to polythene bags provided that it is economical and readily available. At the function of releasing the report of a survey carried out by the ESDO titled, "Revisiting Bangladesh's polythene ban: Gaps, governance and solution" such interesting results were presented. 

What a mindless lack of initiatives or playing to the gallery on the part of successive governments including this caretaker government! The country that earned the distinction of making a law to ban polythene for the first time in the world in 2002 should have given a far better account of itself by this time. Instead, the success in limiting polythene use during the first couple of years was lost to aggressive and indiscriminate use of plastic and polythene bags. 

But why? True, polythene shopping bags are damn cheap, convenient and water-resistant allowing the extra advantage of carrying live fish or sliced pieces of meat and fish. Those are weightless and can be thrown away after onetime use. Yet, such plus points are used as an excuse for not making a decisive drive against the substance now posing to be the gravest threat to Bangladesh's land and water bodies. Until 2020, the nation used 977,000 tonnes of plastic annually and only 31 per cent of it was recycled.  Over the past five years, the use of plastic may have risen further. 

True, consumers are to blame for using the illegal polythene but when the kitchen markets, grocers and other shops generously hand over the purchased items in poly bags, they forget the legal binding and accept the offer. These bags are not only free but also spare customers the trouble of carrying gunny or other bags. Convenience gets the better of awareness of environmental concerns. To reverse this situation, the administration's interference was most necessary. Syeda Rizwana Hasan in charge of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change started, like her predecessors, with a bang and is ending her tenure with a whimper so far as the ban on polythene is concerned. She has also followed in the footsteps of her predecessors who made hollow promise to eliminate use of polythene shopping bags. 

In this context, an additional director general of the Department of Environment (DoE), who was present at the (ESDO) function, takes a gibe at the policymakers and formulators of the law for not defining polythene precisely. He claims that polythene bags with handles are banned but not the ones without handles. The presence of grey areas in legal provisions often allows unholy quarters to take undue advantage of the loopholes. Then it is argued that the initial success in containing polythene production could not be sustained because of the exemption of import of raw materials used for packaging in the garment sector. That loophole is abused for production of polythene. 

This argument is flawed too. Any half-way-house approach to this dangerous substance not perishable in centuries cannot succeed. Without taking any punitive actions against polythene factories and conducting some showy drives against retail shops or kitchen market for use of those bags, it is impossible to eliminate the use of such non-biodegradable bags. If the production of polythene is completely stopped, the supply line will dry up. More importantly, there is an overriding need for polythene's replacement. 

Dr. Mubarak Ahmad Khan, once a chief scientific officer at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, developed a kind of water-resistant and bio-degradable jute poly bags from jute cellulose ---ones that are superior to the petroleum-based plastic bags. But this was not followed up by effective commercial venture in order to bring down the comparatively higher cost of production. Had this initiative been taken to a logical conclusion, it would have done a world of good to the environment and the moribund jute sector would stand a chance of achieving a revival of its fortunes. But neither the government nor any private enterprise came forward to provide the commercial push to this outstanding invention. 

As far as is learnt, large prototypes of the machine Dr. Mubarak fashioned could be made to produce jute poly bags on a commercial basis aimed at bringing down the production cost near to that of the level of petroleum-based polythene bags. The government of that time or the incumbent one failed to comprehend the immensely beneficial consequence of such a venture. It is, therefore, a mere lip-service when the government sets a target of reducing polythene by 30 per cent by 2030. To save Bangladesh or by extension the world from invasion of plastic and polythene, this important invention should have been patronised by public-private or domestic-foreign collaborations. The world would be a better place to live in if jute poly bags or sheets replaced the existing harmful polythene.

nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com