Beat Plastic Pollution ! Go Green & Save Our Environment !!
Showing posts with label beatplasticpollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beatplasticpollution. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 June 2018
Happy World Environment Day 2018
This year world environment day 2018 theme is Beat Plastic Pollution .Plastic is giving slow poison to our environment everyday. before it is to late ,we should stop using it .We have to adopt and use bio-degradable product and Eco -friendly product . If we really want to make our environment safe for our future generations . It's never too late to start so from today onwards lets say no to plastic bags!On World Environment Day ,Let's join together to beat plastic pollution and make our city plastic free. Please Do not ask for polythene bags while doing shopping ,Use you Eco Friendly hand bags like Jute or home made hand bags .
Come Join Us Today ! Please contact us at: communications@heeals.org
The Thorn in India’s Environmental Side: Open Defecation and a Review of Swachh Bharat
Happy
World Environment Day from all of us here at HEEALS! In honour of this
important day, this blog post will reflect on India as this year’s global host
for World Environment Day, with specific focus on The Ministry of Drinking
Water and Sanitation’s “Swachh Bharat Mission”, and it’s goal of making India
Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2019.
India
is the open defecation capital of the world, with just under half of the
population - 564 million people - unable or unwilling to use a toilet.[1]
Beyond the obvious and devastating impacts that this has on Indian health, open
defecation is a serious environmental concern for several reasons. Human waste
introduces toxins and bacteria into the ecosystem that cannot be broken down in
a sustainable time, relative to the amount that they are released. This buildup
of microbes harms aquatic systems and the life that occupy them. Open
defecation also contributes to eutrophication, preventing light diffusion and
oxygen from reaching life underwater. Above the surface, even the smell of
human waste in excess pollutes the surrounding air.[2]
One often hears of open defecation from the perspective of it's health impacts,
and for good reason; However, regarding open defecation from an environmental
lens provides a more nuanced and complex perspective to the issue.
On
October 2nd, 2014, the Prime Minister of India launched the “Swachh Bharat
Mission” with the objective of facilitating a clean and ODF country over a
five-year time span. The strategy for implementing this massive task includes
augmenting the institutional capacity of districts to allow for behaviour
change activities at the grassroots level. The program also intended on
providing more flexibility to states, so as to incentivize local communities
based on individual context and maximize coverage.[3]
The mission places priority on facilitating behaviour change, as many rural
communities are unaware of the health and environmental impacts of open
defecation, and therefore see it as more convenient than using a toilet.
So,
with just over a year left until the projected “ODF India”, let’s explore how
the project has performed; The Swachh Bharat website suggests the facilitation
of 17 ODF states since 2014, with a grand total of 73,680,690 household toilets
built since October 2014.[4]
The mission has reached 62.48% of its goal, and while nowhere near the
projected 100% ODF, one must commend the mission on having made it this far.
With a population size like India’s, making any claim for completeness - especially
regarding something as ingrained in society as open defecation - is quite
unlikely to be achieved. Nonetheless, 62.48% is quite significant. The five
districts with the highest ODF coverage are ordered as follows: A & N
Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigard, Chattisgarh, and D & N Haveli.
While
it makes sense to contextualize local realities by regulating Swachh Bharat at
a state level, it does not help to ignore state capacity in the process- without
aiding Low-Income States reach the same level of progress as those more
capable, Swachh Bharat becomes less of a national mission, and more of a
fragmented mission open to states who are able to implement it properly.
This
World Environment Day, let us reflect on our own individual capacities to do
better for our world, and take these capacities into account in our advocacy
work. Let us raise each other up in the process of creating a better and more
sustainable planet. Happy World Environment Day!
-Jayde
WASH and Menstrual Hygiene Intern Coordinator
source:
[1]
http://www.teamswachhbharat.in/get-the-facts.php
[2]
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/how-open-defecation-affect-human-health-environment-and-solutions.php
[3]
http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm
[4]
http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm
[5]
https://sbm.gov.in/sbmReport/Report/Physical/SBM_VillageODFMarkStatus.aspx
Tackling Plastic Pollution
At HEEALS, one of our main concerns is keeping our environment healthy. We’re living in an age where single-use plastics are everywhere, especially in the hot months when people switch from their paper cups filled with teas and coffees to cold beverages in plastic cups. We wanted to write a special blog post for World Environment Day – especially because this year India is the host and the theme is “Beat Plastic Pollution.” To be totally honest, doing the research for this blog post was devastating, and showed me personally how much more informed I need to be about environmental issues and how much more I need to be doing. So, without further ado, here is a fact list that will break your heart.
· While India has a lot of visible plastic pollution, there is actually less produced here per capita than in most other countries- and by a long shot too. On average, Indians use 24 pounds of plastic in a year, and when you think about how light plastic is, you realize that this is quite a lot. On the other hand, Americans are using an average of 240 pounds of plastic per year- and while I couldn’t find the numbers for Canada it would be safe to guess that it’s around the same amount
A plastic bag can take up to 1000 years to decompose. A plastic bottle takes around 500 years. A foam cup can take between 50 and 100 years.
· Throughout the world, 20,000 plastic bottles are purchased every single second. That’s 1,728,000,000 plastic bottles purchased every day- adding up to a grand total of six hundred and eighty billion, seven hundred and twenty million every year (680,720,000,000).
· Trash on beaches and in oceans often get carried north by the water currents and eventually wash up onto Arctic shores. In 2017, Dutch scientists found an average of 575 pieces of garbage per 100 metres of beach on Jan Mayen Island, dubbed the “most remote” island in the north of the Atlantic Ocean. By comparison, they found only 375 pieces/100m on Dutch beaches, even though these areas see an immensely greater number of humans every day.
As devastating as reading these facts can be, it’s important to remember two things: (1) the world can’t be expected to change overnight, but (2) we all have a role to play in conserving the environment and no effort is too small. This can mean bringing a reusable bottle or thermos next time you go to Starbucks, or carrying your empty plastic bottle a little further until you get to a recycling bin rather than just a trash can. It can mean writing to politicians and business owners, starting initiatives if you have those positions of authority, and teaching kids young about the importance of keeping our Earth clean.
In India right now there are some really cool initiatives going on. The organization ExtraCarbon will pick up your recyclables for you and even pay you for them as well! Unilever has developed a method that will allow us to recycle PET bottle indefinitely, with none of the health and safety concerns that have been present in the past, and in areas of India there are even roads being made out of recycled plastic!
HEEALS has also been doing some work in the recycled plastic sector. We have a “Say ‘No’ To Plastic” campaign promoting the use of reusable bags over plastic ones and have a catalogue where you can purchase recycled hand-made jewelry and crafts to support the NGO. We also have a partnership with BlueHorse Group, who make and sell eco-friendly and organic products. If you want to know more about what HEEALS is doing to help the environment and learn how you can get involved, reach out to Gaurav Kashyap, director, at gaurav@heeals.org.
-Rachel
WASH and Menstrual Hygiene Intern Coordinator
Sources:
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