Sunglasses, shoes, designer bags and much more is being made using single use plastic waste.
It’s some really good innovation being done on ground to up-cycle all of this plastic waste. In the recent months, though, I am noticing a rather worrying sentiment. I have come across situations where people seem to feel less guilty buying that pack of Lays chips or that Bisleri water bottle because there’s soo much of up cycling happening anyways.
I am writing only to bring this into our awareness that all this innovation is meant to only help temporarily with managing waste that is already generated. None of this should be seen as a permanent solution for us to continue generating single use plastic waste. So we still need to make efforts towards reducing / stopping this waste generation and eventually eradicating this waste.
I guess these are perils of seeing waste that is unwanted in the first place as an input material for a value chain. So one must have this clarity that these value chains are only means to address waste that is already generated while we continue to make efforts to reduce and finally eliminate this waste.
Took this pic yesterday as I was driving back to Nilgiris from Mysore at the forest check post. Nilgiris is a single use plastic-free district so at the check post, vehicles are checked for any single use plastic and removed. They collect a huge pile everyday.
