The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : City’s efforts towards shunning plastics

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Monday, Apr 14, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

City’s efforts towards shunning plastics

K.V. Prasad

Intensive campaign will mark the run-up to the enforcement of a ban from April 23

— File Photo: M. Periasamy

EARTH’S ENEMY: Plastic bags and cups dumped on a road at New Sidhapudur in the city.

COIMBATORE: “Plastics choke, plastics pollute and plastics can kill.” The city is set to see these being raised as slogans in processions by students and environment activists and on banners and posters as part of the Coimbatore Corporation’s drive against plastics, in view of a ban that is to be enforced here from April 23.

A number of sensitisation programmes are being planned by the Corporation, in association with the citizens’ and environment protection groups such as Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore and Osai. The association’s project co-ordinator S. Baskar says it has prepared a number of slogans in Tamil and English that are aimed at sensitising people to the need keeping off plastics. Notices carrying messages against plastics will be pasted at shops. These are aimed at persuading the people to come to shops with cloth or paper bags. They should not insist that the shops provide plastic carry bags. A surplus of carry bags at home leads to their being recklessly dumped into open storm water drains and along roads.

Various campaigns will highlight the dangers from plastics to vital infrastructures such as the sewerage system. Disposable plastic cups, plates, spoons and straws are dumped in the sewers as an easy method of disposal. Shops have been accused of doing this to avoid the task of storage and paying the civic body garbage charges for disposal.

The general public, especially residents, too have been accused of dumping plastics in the drainage. This caused blocks in the drainage lines and they burst.

Consequently, sewage gushes out of manholes and floods roads. The Corporation points out that each time a sewerage burst occurs, plastics are invariably the culprits. Plastics will choke the lines and cause serious damage to them. Another focus of the campaign is the pollution plastics can cause.

The Corporation and the citizens’ groups point out that the accumulation of plastic bags and other items on open spaces, including dump yards, is fraught with the risk of preventing rain water from re-charging the water table. Plastics can form an impenetrable layer and prevent percolation.

Mayor R. Venkatachalam says the Corporation is keen on making the anti-plastics drive a vital component of its solid waste management efforts. Various parties have been pointing out that no waste management scheme can be successful without a specific focus on plastics.

As for the point that plastics can kill, environment protection groups will highlight the risk posed to animals. They may try to eat leftover food in plastic carry bags. If the bags are also eaten, the animals will die of complications caused by the plastic bags.

Organisations such as RAAC and Osai point out that though the law cracks down only on plastics below 20 microns, plastics in all forms should be shunned by the people. How did we live before the advent of plastics? How did we shop without plastic bags some decades ago? And, is it impossible to live without them? These are the questions that will be posed to the people by the Corporation, through the media and also various forms of campaign.

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