Covid, Lockdowns and our Rising Piles of Waste
Climate action is needed NOW.
In India, the lockdown, as a measure against Covid 19, began in March 2020. We were yet to discover the far reaching effects of the virus, but we could see the short term effects of a lockdown. With almost everyone locked up indoors, nature began healing. Waking up every morning was beautiful! We could hear birds chirping, animals felt safer and were coming out to play, the air became cleaner and I saw hope. But all good things must come to an end. The burden of running the economy was solely on the shoulders of workers providing our essentials. I won’t even get into how difficult and unfair life has been to them. As a society, we have been more worried about the economy than the lives of people.
One Step Forward. Two Steps Back.
As we tried to ‘get back to normal’, things have taken a turn for the worse. Because of the kind of virus Corona is, we’ve created gigantic piles of medical waste at an exponential rate. ‘The current rapid surge in healthcare waste due to the COVID-19 pandemic is further exacerbating the problem and there is an immediate threat that the impacts of unsafe disposal of healthcare waste will spill over into a crisis of environmental pollution’, cites an article on Covid-19 waste management.
The virus is going to be here for a while. Medical staff have no choice but to use disposable plastic-based personal protective equipment (PPE) and other single-use plastic. We’ve seen so many stories of our medical warriors keeping themselves and patients cheerful in spite of the extremely gruelling hardships they are going through. The video of the ENT surgeon dancing to Ghungroo was a real delight, wasn’t it!
5 Ways You Can Change This
Though our medical community has no choice, we can make some changes on an individual level.
· Use cloths masks and you don’t need many. A handful of masks are sufficient. Use, wash, dry, repeat.
· Use soap as much as you can, and sanitisers when you can’t. If possible, buy a refill pack of sanitiser to avoid collecting heaps of plastic bottles.
· Eat clean. Support outlets that are switching to sustainable and waste-reducing techniques. Say no to plastic cutlery and paper napkins, especially for take-aways. You can wash your hands at home. If you are familiar with local eateries, pick up food in your own tin containers.
· Carry cloth/reusable bags wherever you go. Say No to plastic. The onus is on you too. Chose more eco-friendly and biodegradable options for clothing and packaging.
· Segregate your household waste. You can make a compost bucket for organic wet waste and also grow simple herbs and veggies from the beautiful soil that you get.
I, Me and Myself — All the Time!
Shows such as Our Planet and A Life on our Planet on Netflix make me realise just how wonderful our planet is. We are ‘not just ruining but destroying it’ as Sir David Attenborough says. Though the earth is trying to recoup, we aren’t allowing it. Why? Our wants are exceeding the earth’s capacity. We want certain food all the year round, we want meats all the year round, we want fish all the year round, we want a certain lifestyle and standard of living which are not sustainable. We aren’t adapting to the earth’s patterns and how it provides for us. Instead, we are forcing the earth to adapt to us.
Climate Change has Begun. This is Not a Drill!
Here are some not-so-fun facts from A Life on our Planet that really shook me — “Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. 70% of the mass of birds on this planet are domestic birds. Humans account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on earth. A further 60% are the animals we raise to eat. The rest of mammals make up just 4%. This is now our planet run by humankind for humankind. Previously, it took volcanic activity of up to one millions years to dredge up an amount of carbon to trigger catastrophes like the five mass extinctions. By burning millions of years’ worth of living organisms all at once as coal and oil, we have managed to do this in less than 200 years.”
We’re already on our downward spiral. Comprende?
The uncontrollable burning of the Amazon rainforests, the wildfires in California, erratic climatic conditions, extreme temperatures, floods, the locust outbreaks in India, droughts, landslides, storms, more frequent cyclones and earthquakes are not coincide. They aren’t a preview. They’re just the tip of the iceberg. Climate change is here and now. Our lifetime is going to be witness to many more disasters. In a few years, the phrase–tip of the iceberg — won’t even be relatable because of the rate at which our globe is warming. We have to change our ways, both individually and collectively, if we want to continue to cohabitate our earth. Without the rest of the living world, we will not survive.
What about the Government? What about Companies?
Even if each of us were to change our lifestyles and make sustainable choices, we won’t see real change until the giants, the power actors — governments, international bodies, businesses, MNCs such as Amazon do their bit. They need to be held accountable. There has been destruction of natural rock formations, clearance for drilling of oil and gas in national parks, the dredging of rivers, deforestation for the expansion of an airport, and more all in the name of development. Land grabs, lack of regard for and planning of waste management, no transparency, and exclusion of citizens from having a say in their policies leave us to bear the consequences of their actions. Companies continue to create piles and piles of waste without assuming responsibility for the environmental damage they are causing.
Mission: Abort Destruction of Planet Earth
If we continue this way, we’ll barely recover from this pandemic before we head into another one that we are responsible for. “We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” said Kristalina Georgiva, CEO of World Bank two years ago at the UN Summit. Surrounded by landfills and our own waste, no air purifiers will be able to save us from suffocating to death. The time to change is NOW.
