Plastic in India - Who’s to Blame?

I’ve been in India for nearly a month now, and although I had steeled myself to see plastic and litter strewn across the streets, I wasn’t prepared for some of the sight I have seen.

Mountains of plastic tumbling into the ocean. Animals grazing on litter by the side of the road. People throwing their waste out of the windows of buses and trains as if it’s the most normal thing. Plastic bottles in the middle of nowhere, discarded as if inconsequential. It’s so ubiquitous here that I believe people have become desensitised to it, less likely to think twice about their actions. But also businesses and governments aren’t helping. The government has banned plastic bags, and yet there seem to be no municipal waste systems to collect and properly discard waste in coastal communities, meaning the easiest thing for them to do is throw it into the sea or pile it up on the side of the road until it starts falling down the cliffs into the ocean.

I got thinking - Who’s to blame?

Is it the businesses who are profiting from making plastic at the expense of the environment and people’s hygiene? Is it the government for not providing the appropriate infrastructure? Or is it the individuals who chuck their plastic onto the floor without even thinking about it?

One day on a train a guy came round selling Byriani in foil trays. There was a plastic tub of yogurt inside too. It was delicious by the way. I watched the guy sat opposite me eat his, and then toss all the packaging out of the window once he’d finished as if it was just the most normal thing in the world, while I searched around for a bin, a little gutted that there was nowhere to recycle the yogurt pot.

Is he to blame?

I think apportioning blame is completely unhelpful. This is a complicated, multi-faceted problem. So often I have comments on my posts about plastic in the UK saying that there’s no point tackling it there when countries in Asia are causing so much more harm. I think this is very unhelpful too. We all have a part we can play in this, and the UK is by no means perfect.

We also need to consider the beliefs, ethics and systems that people in India have grown up with. The education around the importance of their actions. In the UK we’re brought up being told that littering is not ok, both ethically and legally. In India it’s the norm.

If I was brought up in the same situation as he, maybe I’d be chucking my Byriani packaging out of the window of the train too.

Rather than blaming and shaming, let’s focus on what we can do about this.

In India, I have no voice as a citizen. But I do have a voice as a tourist. I take my metal straw with me to every restaurant, and explain why I’m asking for my drinks without a plastic straw. I suck up the odd looks when I produce my metal straw because the potential impact of showing the restaurant owners that this matters to customers is much more important. I talk about it to whoever I can here, both gathering information and understanding, and helping to show people who rely on tourists that using less plastic will make us happier. When businesses are doing the right thing, I celebrate it with them. But in the UK I have an even bigger voice - my citizen’s voice. I can vote, I can make it known to my MP that this matters, and I can advise businesses that I won’t be purchasing from them until they make the right choices.

So next time we look to shame an individual or an entire country, let’s just take a step back, look at the big picture and acknowledge that there are very different, very deep-rooted, issues in play here. Yes every country needs to step up and take responsibility for producing less and better managing waste, and yes we need to make it known that this is important, but the UK isn’t perfect yet either. Let’s continue to educate, inspire and set a flipping good example to other countries around the world on how brilliant it feels to do the right thing, and live in a caring, determined society that is dedicated to minimising its own impact before shaming others.

UPDATE: The Keralan government are now implementing new laws banning the use of single-use plastic bags and some other single-use plastic items. The Tamil Nadu government are also clamping down on single-use plastic usage, and even have ‘drinking water ATMs’ where you can refill your water bottle with drinking water for a nominal fee. The more I spoke to people about the issues in Kerala, the more reassured I was that people are starting to care about this, and acknowledge that, in alignment with the government’s new measures, it is crucial to tackle it. The actual manifestations of these measures will only be truly measurable in the years to come, but it’s great to see it on the agenda, with signs up all over the place telling people to refuse single-use plastic.