SHIVANI SINGH

The topography and the landscape may keep changing, but what is that one thing you find everywhere as you travel across India? The answer would be the ubiquitous plastic bag, a pet bottle, a candy wrapper, an empty chips packet, or a pan masala sachet.

I have seen the packaging litter scattered in the most pristine of locations: the remote stretches of Arunachal Pradesh, the border village in Ladakh’s Turtuk that opened to tourists only a decade ago, some of our best-protected sanctuaries or farflung beaches.

Urban centres, evidently, are the most affected. Even Mysuru, which was adjudged India’s cleanest city for two years in a row (2015 and 2016) under the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, seemed at peace with this kind of littering as I passed by last week.

While the municipalities are focussed on finding bigticket solutions for waste disposal, it is the little pieces of scrap — bags, wrappers, straws and pet bottles — that are left forgotten where they lay. This innocuous piece of trash, discarded most mindlessly, is the most harmful to the environment.

Plastic bottles and bags are easier to recycle because they are made from a single material. It is the multi-layered packaging materials that pose a bigger ecological hazard. Made from polymer films coated with a thin layer of metal, usually aluminium, these wrappers do not break down easily. Swept from the streets by cleaners, they get mixed with other waste, reach landfills, and remain there, almost forever.

A good quantity of such garbage is, anyway, never collected from the roadside.