Plastics pose ‘doomsday’ threat

When we go shopping, our purchases—food, clothes and other necessities—are usually put in plastic bags. There would be no problem if these were biodegradable bags because in time they would fossilize under the soil. But nonbiodegradable materials like plastics should be recycled.

When there is heavy rainfall, plastic bags are washed away by the streaming, onrushing water into uncovered manholes and canals. They rapidly accumulate and get stuck on waterways or spillways. When this happens, the rainwater stops flowing. If the rain continues, the clogged-up water start rising until the plastic bags give way, causing flash floods which kill people and destroy properties while exacting a heavy toll on the environment.

Realizing the awesome destruction caused by the indiscriminate disposal of plastic trash, one lawmaker has proposed a law that, if approved and strictly enforced, is expected to eventually solve this problem about plastic trash.

In the United States today, the use of plastic bags for carrying grocery items, food or nonfood, is strictly prohibited. Any sociopath caught violating this prohibition is fined. The shoppers now bring their own shopping bags.

One solution that our government is now undertaking is the conversion of nonbiodegradable plastics into plastic products such as pails, basins, chairs, drums, washbowls, etc.

Street urchins go to dumps searching for plastics and other trash items that they could sell. They gather them, clean them, and sell them to recycling plants where recyclable garbage is bought by the kilo. To others, the money that the children make may not be much, but for children themselves it solves their family’s next meal.

These young street boys and girls may be untidy, uneducated, uncared for and perhaps orphans, but I consider them unbemedalled “street heroes,” more dignified than corrupt government officials and greedy businessmen because these children make their earnings through honest toil and labor.

The garbage that these street urchins pick up and sell every day is their greatest contribution to our environmental cleanup drive, and to our efforts to tame global pollution.

These street children likewise contribute greatly in preventing the hole in our planet ozonosphere from getting wider in diameter. This ozone, which envelops our planet earth, absorbs and shields us from the heat of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. If we remain complacent and unconcerned, the global warming that the whole world is now experiencing will worsen. And if this is allowed to continue, the land areas of countries that are just a few feet above sea level would be submerged by the meltdown of gigantic and towering polar icebergs. The oceans would dramatically rise and swell, creating giant tidal waves and rampaging tsunamis that might sweep our six continents into watery extinction!

—ROBERT A. CURRY,

Block 69, Lot 3,

Haring Silangan Street,

Lagro, Novaliches,

Quezon City 1118