Kolkata, Apr 06 (UNI) Today plastic waste is considered at the core of environmental pollution and climate change. The amount of trash, that continuous use of plastic, thermocol, and other non-biodegradable materials is piling up, is voluminous and is acting as a slow poison that has been introduced into our systems, be it marine, terrestrial or even our own bodies.
As per recent reports, in India more than 15,000 tons of plastic waste is generated every day, of which 6,000 tons remain uncollected and littered.
Plastics take over 500 years to start decomposing. The first plastics were only created about 70 years back and hence it is a long time before even the first begin to decompose. If we look at the problem at a global level, we have already created over 8.3 billion tons of plastics (over 50 per cent of that in the last 13 years!). This is equal to over 1 billion elephants in terms of size! 35 per cent of the plastic used is single time use which cannot be recycled.