Mankind, who has become blind in the global rush of modernity and technological progress, is now suffering all sorts of ill effects just because of ‘hathna karye haiye vage’. Moreover, disturbed seasonal cycle, polluted environment, viruses that attack the environment are some examples. Garbage is one such problem. Biodegradable waste may go away, but what about plastic waste? The problem of how to deal with it is perplexing the countries all over the world. The latest news has come that our country India is number one in generating plastic waste! Researchers from the University of Leeds in Britain have recently conducted research in this direction and said that the world produces so much plastic waste every year that if we pile it up, it would be as high as the famous ‘Empire State Building’ in New York City. The building is 102 stories tall, so imagine the mountain of waste it creates. The study examined locally produced waste in more than 50,000 cities around the world. The world produces 5.7 million tons of plastic pollution every year, with the southern hemisphere contributing the most. India is number one. India generates 1.02 crore tonnes of plastic waste in a year. This figure is more than double the amount of plastic waste generated by the second-ranked country. Governments around the world fail to collect and dispose of plastic waste from 15 percent of the world’s population. This 15 percent population includes 25.5 crore people in India alone. The report presented by the researchers said that America, which generates 52,500 tons of plastic waste annually, ranks 90th in the list and Britain, which generates 5,100 tons of plastic waste, ranks 135th.

These cities generate the most plastic waste:

If we talk about plastic-polluting cities, Nigeria’s largest city ‘Lagos’ comes at number one in the world. After that, India’s capital ‘Delhi’, Angola’s capital ‘Luanda’, Pakistan’s ‘Karachi’ and Egypt’s ‘Cairo’ have been placed. Plastic waste is the most dangerous not only to mankind, but also to ecosystems, agriculture and water-land, as it takes centuries, not years or decades, for even the smallest plastic particle to be completely disposed of, and by then, those it comes in contact with continues to pollute all media. When our country is number one in the list of countries producing plastic waste, it will be in the interest of the country and the world if we all take pride in being Indians and stop spreading waste everywhere.