Shop the ‘shopper’

Published November 7, 2016
The writer is a member of staff.
The writer is a member of staff.

PLASTICS — one of the defining characteristics of the modern age. But from the perspective of the chemist, a plastic can be an organic or inorganic polymer, the former apparently having being used as far back as a millennium and half before Christ when, in what is now Mexico, balls made of rubber — a natural polymer — were being used.

I am no chemist and therefore shy away from a technical discussion. Basic reading though indicates that various forms of the material, including celluloid, were presented with growing frequency from the mid-1800s onwards. What most of us generally recognise today as ‘plastic’ was born in 1907 with the invention of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic. Bakelite was the parent of plastics common today such as polystyrene, polyester, PVC, nylon and polythene.

Interesting history notwithstanding, germane to the discussion here is the one thing that everyone knows about plastics: they last forever. Plastic might sit in a landfill, or by the side of the road, for thousands of years; it will not decompose. And such are the levels of plastic pollution on the planet now that there is growing a body of documentation detailing how mankind’s plastic junk is finding its way into the oceans where it collects in massive floating islands spinning in the water currents. The cost extracted from marine life and the environment is, of course, incalculably heavy.


Raising awareness must be part of any move to ban polythene.


Pakistan may not be one of the countries counted as amongst the world’s prime environmental polluters, that dubious honour being generally reserved for more developed and industrialised countries. But in terms of pollution as a result of plastics, a mere survey of any street, any field, any stream or nullah, anywhere in the country, is an indictment. The material, particularly the polythene bag, is everywhere.

At any given location, there may or may not be an environment conducive to the growth of plants; but the hardy perennial polythene bag, colloquially known as the ‘shopper’, flourishes in impressive abundance. From the forests in the north that are rapidly being denuded to the mangrove forests in the south, similarly in the process of being decimated, and from the freshwater springs in the mountains to the drainage channels in towns and cities, all are choked by shoppers.

An artist’s depiction of Pakistan a hundred years from now may realistically present a picture where it is smothered under layers upon layers of polythene, never perhaps to surface again.

It is not that the problem has not been identified. Various parts of government machinery in various parts of the country have, from time to time, banned (for whatever good might accrue from the move) certain categories of the polythene bag. Sindh, Punjab, most recently Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year, have all tried it, at least the first two more than once. But these efforts have all been met with mixed success, and so the shopper continues to rule.

Briefly, the use of the banned micron-thickness of the bags — usually the most lightweight varieties that are considered the most pernicious because of their widespread use and ability to sort of ‘melt away’ into the environment — goes down; but then, as soon as the vigilant eye of the law has to turn its attention elsewhere, as it must, there it is, back as if it never left.

In my view, the problem does not lie only with vendors and shopkeepers (even though from personal experience I must record that I am met with surprised stares most times I refuse a polythene bag), who are the ones the state initiatives target; they provide what the customers demand. And vendor after vendor, retailer after retailer, has over the years reported to the press that it is the customers themselves who demand everything packaged separately and in plastic, and resist any move otherwise. Across the country, there are very few retailers, most of them high-end, that have successfully switched to alternatives, the best of which is a reusable bag or basket.

It follows, then, that any move to ban polythene of a certain sort will be useless if it is not accompanied by a mass awareness-raising exercise about the evils of this substance. And given how ubiquitous the use of this menace is, that will not be an easy task. Here is where one misses the dominance of entities such as PTV and Radio Pakistan, which could legitimately be used as public-service information providers.

At the same time, this is a country where an entire industry — that of Basant — and a centuries’ old preferred pastime — kite-flying — was made illegal and utterly stamped out as a result of steely state resolve. Whatever one’s views about that (I continue to oppose the move), the fact is that it was successful. Is it really so hard to crack down on the ‘shopper’ industry that stands to claim the environment, and therefore lives and livelihoods, for decades to come?

The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2016

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