The government should not relax the thermocol ban
Polystyrene or plastic foam, commonly known in India as thermocol, is one of the different types of plastic that has been banned by the Maharashtra government.
Last week, the government eased restrictions on the use of some banned items after pressure from traders’ group; plastic packing used by retailers will be exempted from the ban, but only for three months.
There is now pressure from Ganpati mandals to remove restrictions on the use of thermocol for the Ganeshotsav festival in September.
Why is plastic foam such an indispensable material for a Hindu festival? Thermocol is used to create decorations in the pandals and it is cheap, light and can be carved and painted. After the festival, most of the thermocol ends up in garbage dumps or in water bodies where the idols go.
The Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshostsav Samanvay Samiti (BSGSS), the umbrella organisation of the mandals have asked state environment minister Ramdas Kadam — who has been the main promoter of the plastic ban — to relax the rules, at least for this Ganeshotsav.
The minister has directed the group to the government-appointed committee that is overseeing the implementation of the ban. Should the government relax the ban on thermocol?
Environmentalists have said that the material, if not disposed of correctly, is an environmental hazard, ending up as flotsam on water bodies, clogging rivers and lakes, harming aquatic life.
The Institute for European Environment Police (IEEP), and other environmental agencies have said that broken-down pieces are ingested by marine life, putting humans who consume seafood at possible risk.
Polystyrene’s use is not restricted to pandals; it is used to make single-use beverage cups, plates and buoys. It is used for insulation and for packing fragile goods.
With hardly any recycling, most of it ends up in garbage dumps or in water bodies. Heal the Bay, an environmental advocacy in Santa Monica, California, estimated that polystyrene foam is the third most common source of trash after plastic pieces and cigarette butts, washing up on local beaches.
Americans are reported to be discarding 2.5 billion foam cups annually. The World Economic Forum has said that if plastics continue to be dumped into the ocean at the current rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.
A research paper by Rutgers University, United States, said that polystyrene cannot biodegrade or break down and remains in the environment for thousands of years. The study said that the polystyrene manufacturing process is the 5th largest creator of hazardous waste.
IEEP said that nearly 60% of the total weight of plastic in five major sub-tropical garbage gyres – islands of trash in the sea created by movement of currents between 2007 and 2013 were from discarded fishing buoys.
Plastic foam is more dangerous than plastic bags and one study in the United States said that while both are recyclable, only 1% of plastic foam is recycled while the recycling rate for bags is three times more. Environment agencies have said that though it is possible to recycle polystyrene, its low-density makes it uneconomical to do so. Ideally, 100% of plastic should be recycled but is never so even in places good at recycling.
“Even in recycling 30% is lost and 100% do not come back,” says Nandikesh Sivalingam of environment watchdog Greenpeace.
The Ganpati mandals have explained that they had already purchased their thermocol stocks before the ban. This claim is implausible because the government had announced in January that it will ban varieties of plastic from the Marathi New Year, which is in April.
Finding a substitute for polystyrene will be tough as the material is 98% air and so lightweight that replacing it with paper or other material could raise packing costs.
Also, replacing a problematic matter with another is not a solution.
“Replacing plastic with papers will lead to the cutting of more trees. The answer is to manage waste and not replace it,” says Sivalingam.