Dumping plastics, drinking them from river

NEW DELHI: Last week, a friend asked me why I was bothered about plastics. Sewage, he said, is a much bigger problem. Plastics will at least flow into the river, but sewage kills us, he added.

This left me confounded, because yes, sewage is a huge crisis in India, but one environmental challenge doesn’t trump the other.

But my friend, with a very high empathy towards nature and an excellent, rational mind, pushed me to think.

I didn’t agree and used data to add onto my arguments.

Then, a shocking new global report by Orb Media told us most places in the world, even if they claim drinking quality tap water, supply plastic-contaminated water. In fact, of the many samples tested across Delhi, United States, Beirut, Jakarta, Europe (various), Kampala and Quito had plastic. In all, 83% of the global samples contained plastics.

And 82% of the New Delhi samples contained micro-plastics. These plastics come into our water through many sources.

These range from micro-plastics in our face cleansers and other cosmetics, to plastics we end up dumping into our rivers, which break up over time. There’s more research needed, but we know, like sea turtles, humans are also ingesting plastics.

This doesn’t make plastics more important, but it underscores the complexity of an ecosystem where humans dump all kinds of waste, mostly seen in sewage and trash. It is this complexity that we must acknowledge, explore and embrace.