Years ago, when I was just completing my graduation, I was required to submit a survey project on environmental science. Back in those days – and I suspect till today – the modus operandi of such projects used to be a simple copy and paste with some fudging of data. Sadly, I chose the longer path of actually carrying out a survey in my area. The municipal councilor of the area had recently banned the use of single-use plastics (polythenes) and I felt confident that this would be an ideal survey topic. People would be highly discomfited by the withdrawal of polythenes and would say so, thus providing an interesting set of data. Over two weeks and countless questionnaires, though, I realized that most people were in fact, supportive of the ban as long as it was on record. Even off record, i.e. when the questionnaire was complete and the discussion veered into freewheeling territory, their arguments remained firmly anti-plastic. It was surprising to learn how educated many ordinary people were regarding the ill-effects of plastic and how they affect the environment. Many even suggested alternatives which we’d read of in our books – jute bags, paper bags, etc etc.
My project was complete, the data set providing a textbook example of an educated set of people who were willing to sacrifice their convenience for the environment. I don’t think all this effort brought me more marks than the average copycat, but it did leave in me an impression that environmental education had reached a point where administrative efforts would be supported instead of being ignored as is the norm in India. I also told myself that I was being overoptimistic, and that it was impossible that people would have changed so much. They were probably just wondering where this questionnaire would end up, and therefore were being highly circumspect with their answers. Yet I could not deny that they knew a lot of about the environmental effects of plastic, and support or no support, understood what the ban was for.
Three years later, I would be sent on my first substantial job to Tehatta (I made a whole series of articles on Tehatta about two years back). First impressions suggested that the people there would be less aware of the ill effects of plastic. After all, plastics were cheaper, and who had the time and energy to source bio-degradable stuff at higher cost when their lives revolved around getting the maximum amount of work done to be able to afford a decent living ?
Strangely, the NSS activities of the college proved otherwise. As part of the NSS camps, we sent students into the surrounding villages (basically the areas from where they themselves came) and asked them to carry out surveys. Despite the obvious observer bias inherent in this method, we found the students and their respondents were also remarkably well aware of the risks that plastic posed. We received detailed information listing out the various ill effects of plastic, including the accumulation of plastic in the local Jalangi river and other sources of water. The variety of responses told us that the people were acutely aware of the menace of plastic insofar as their daily lives were concerned.
This was refreshing, because unlike the respondents of my Honours survey, these weren’t textbook answers. Rather, they pointed out specific local problems and suggested specific local remedies. You simply couldn’t find such answers in any textbook, and given the education level of a good number of respondents wasn’t above high school, you knew these people hadn’t simply read or heard of these solutions somewhere. Long story short, my impression about city folk being aware of the risks of plastic was now extended to the people of the villages as well. Sample size of one region notwithstanding, I was informed that environmental awareness was now a general aspect of people’s knowledge.
The strange thing though, was that this knowledge and awareness didn’t translate into any sort of actual action beyond what was required of them by the questionnaires and regular environmental drives. Sure, they would clean up the campus and surrounding areas. But then they themselves would litter those areas again as they’d been doing since the advent of plastic. When quizzed about this quixotic behaviour, their simply reply was that they’d clean it up again, or that it didn’t matter much.
The standard explanation under such circumstances from the educated classes (and you get a hell lot of such responses as soon as you broach the topic over a coffee table tete-a-tete) was that these people had been taught only to respect the law and not to imbibe its spirit. They knew the law could punish them, and so they simply obeyed. What they were required to know, they knew, but what they were required to understand and realize, they did not. Further, given that the impetus for such efforts typically came from city-dwelling or city-minded higher administrative corps, it was not really surprising that the top-down approach resulted in a high-handed but superficial application that showed a few results and then disappeared. All of these explanations would end with a sharp critique of the ruling dispensation and how it was not doing enough for the environment.
After a certain point of time, you realized that these explanations were ones that the city folk needed for their own mental peace, rather than ones that actually brought about change, or explained the lack thereof. This was especially valid since the city folk themselves were often found to be less inclined to litter, or more inclined to not use plastic, than their village counterparts. This was partly due to their financial conditions allowing for the use of alternatives which often cost more than plastics. Further, the city had greater availability of alternatives as opposed to villages.
But what was happening in the villages ? This question returned to my mind during my recently concluded election duty. I was posted on the outskirts of the city, along a nice stretch of the riverfront. This area could best be described as the suburbs, rather than the city proper or the village. The people who lived there were in close proximity to both the villages and the city itself. Yet their actions and behaviour was more in tune with what their village counterparts thought and did rather than what the city folk would do.
The point was driven home by the curious use of plastics for packing food. Us city folk are used to bemoaning the multiple layers of plastic packaging surrounding processed foods like biscuits, etc. Yet when foods come in plastic containers, we don’t bat an eyelid. The argument goes that these containers aren’t strictly single-use since they can be used again. Plus, many of them lay claim to being eco-friendly in some respect.
Not so with the polythenes in which our food came. One plastic bag contained rice, another contained the dal and one more contained the mashed potato (alu vaate) and another the egg curry. Each of these plastics belonged to the much-vilified polythene category i.e. they were simple carry bags which had been tied carefully to ensure the food inside did not come out. Given the excess of water in Bengali cuisine, this was all the more necessary since these carry bags (the colloquial term for polythene bags) were often carried in larger shopping bags for transportation and unceremoniously dumped on the floor at their destination. Anyone who wished to eat would have to pick up the respective bags, pair them with a thermocol (or plastic) plate and head off to a moderately clean and quiet place to eat.
As someone who’d had such meals (the local term, not my own usage) I wasn’t surprised or discomfited by this overtly rough-and-ready way of providing and consuming food. Many a times the food which came to our college at lunchtime would be similarly packed. If the person for whom it was meant had a plate (stored in his locker), then the plastic plate would simply be taken back by the supplier. Otherwise the plastic plate would be used and thrown away along with the carry bags. Since none of my polling part companions had been minded to bring along steel cutlery with them, the only option was to use those plates. There’s a specific method for having food on these plates, unless you want dal and rice all over yourself and nothing in your stomach. You first held the plate down with a full glass of water, then carefully poured out the rice. Then you made a crater in the centre of the rice to pour out the dal. You then have as much rice as possible with the dal, before opening out the remaining bags and proceeding as before. In the end, you dump the empty packets and glass on the plate and throw them away.
You may well ask why I bothered to explain the process in detail ? After all, it isn’t exactly rocket science, and is fairly well known by almost everyone outside the core of the city itself. The reason is simple – at each stage, you have to use the properties of plastics to ensure things to flow when they shouldn’t and do flow when they should. Take for example, the fact that you have to transport liquids without spilling them on cycles through bumpy roads and up equally bumpy stairs. Any spillage would spoil the outer bag and also discolour the place where they’re kept before being consumed. Equally importantly, nothing should be able to go in and adulterate the food, since that would create a health hazard.
Then again, you have to be absolutely sure that the stuff doesn’t leak onto the plate before you want it to flow out. If that happens, you may well end up with dal-ified egg curry or some other frankenstein’s monster, whose taste would be the LCM of the already rather debatable taste of the individual parts. Finally, you want the stuff to flow well, and not get stuck in the bag itself when you’re pouring it out onto the plate. Spoons and other scraping materials are almost never included (unless it’s Chinese, and no one has Chinese for lunch or dinner), and scraping off dal and curry from the inside of the packet is an irritating waste of time.
Ergo, you need something that needs to be spill proof, water proof but also easily openable and pourable. Plastics alone have all these qualities, and polythene bags tend to be the cheapest of them all. In fact, polythene bags have two additional qualities as well – they are highly stretchable but also tearable. You just know how much force you have to apply to a bag to be able to stretch it to perhaps tie it well, and how much you need to tear a gaping hole in it. Other plastics, especially the denser variants, would need inordinately high force, and even then they may tear suddenly.
Given these qualities, it is not surprising that plastics are used in a large variety of food-related applications, from carrying meal components to even juice and tea. There was one instance when we got a large poly bag full of steaming tea, and had to pour it out into different plastic cups before we could have it. This tea itself had been poured from a large thermos which the owner could not spare because it was needed in another polling booth.
This brings us back to the question, where does the ordinary person in the mofussil stand on the question of the ill effects of plastic ? Given what I have seen and heard, it may be said that they are fairly aware of the risks posed, but not cognizant with how these risks translate from their own use of plastics. We are accustomed to seeing huge piles of plastic being recovered from bodies of whales. On the other hand, the actual amounts of plastic in any village or mofussil area would be only a fraction of the kilograms recovered from whales. We know that such small amounts eventually accumulate into the huge amounts but do they realize it ?
Let’s for a moment assume that they do. At least, let’s assume that the younger generation does. What then ? They have few alternatives, since the most common alternative – the paper bag or the thonga, has far too many problems, leaking being not the least of them. Others, such as jute bags, work only when the products being carried are somewhat costly, eg. Sarees. Plus, they again fail the leaking dal test.
This isn’t to say that plastics are used everywhere. In fact, the average villager would only use plastics when they’re on the move. Even then, instead of buying meals, they’d prefer to sit down at some hotel and eat from a hard plastic or metal plate. They’d prefer to have tea in the more durable burnt clay bhnar than in a plastic cup. At home, they’d be using durable stuff, which would include stuff made of harder and durable plastic, metal and glass, but almost never the thin polythene stuff.
Given this, the polythene challenge gets limited to the question of transporting stuff, especially leaky foodstuffs, using the rickety infrastructure that is the norm in mofussil areas. Neither paper, nor jute, nor any of the rather fancy alternatives that people tend to champion from time to time, will work here. Costs, availability and product features (such as non-leakage) will all work against such elite options. Something would need to be found that can transport meals, tea and snacks without making a mess at any point.
I believe that that something would have to arise from the mofussil areas themselves, or at least their usage would have to. Remember that the usage of polythene bags for transporting food was never a feature of the West, nor is it found in the big cities. Rather, it was how a product was adapted by the mofussil areas. Similarly, an existing or new product would have to be adapted (or even better, discovered) in these areas for it to begin replacing polybags.
Until then, all the educational drives, the NSS workshops and questionnaires will remain just paper tigers, satisfying the egos of babus and NGO workers but failing to address the basic requirements of those towards whom they are targeted.