Building A Cleaner Nation

One warm Mumbai afternoon back in 2015 a young Indian man looked out of the window from the tenth floor of his apartment building. He got a glimpse of the beach. What he saw was a horrible sight. Versova, the beloved beach from his childhood, had become a dreadful hell of pollution. No young couple walked the beach. No elderly engaged in games. None played cricket or football. Fishermen were struggling to meet ends with a poor catch.

Versova beach was covered by half a meter of plastic of different hues and colour, washed up from the sea over decades. I have travelled the world, but never seen a sight quite like that.

Afroz Shah, a lawyer and counsel at Bombay High Court - decided to act. Different from how most of us would have reacted, Afroz acted in a true Gandhian way. He simply went down to the beach and started picking plastics. On his way down the stairs he met an 84-year old neighbour who joined him.

There they stood, just two human beings with an impossible task. But soon the duo were joined by  ten, then hundred, then a thousand people. At the end hundreds of thousands of Indians, mostly young people, joined Afroz in cleaning up the beach at Versova and making the Mithi river great again.

Afroz unknowingly created a true Gandhian movement. “You need to be the change you want to see in the world”,the old sage told us. Today Afroz Shah Foundation is mobilising thousands into climate action every weekend. It is running education programmes in poor communities. Prime Minister Modi has described Afroz as a Hero of India. Afroz has received numerous international awards.

Afroz’s  action on the beaches of Mumbai soon got the attention of more powerful people. Top business leaders joined him on weekend clean ups. They offered  heavy equipment like tractors, and even more importantly they embarked upon a dialogue on how to change business practice and quell the plastic crisis at source. Political leaders from Maharashtra and India from different political parties rolled up their sleeves and asked Afroz for advice on political regulations of plastics in India.

What began as an individual’s battle against plastic soon became a vast movement for politicians and businessmen to forge a new pact between humans and nature. From cleaning-up of  waste to single-use plastic to implementing circular economy – the journey of Afroz set an example for all of us.

When plastic was introduced in America in the 1950s, it was seen as the wonder material. One could preserve food better, make cars and aircraft lighter and protect against dangerous bacteria. But as often in human life, when we discover something good, we get addicted. We start overusing it.

There are three main reasons why humanity need to get out of the plastic addiction.

Plastics have no role in nature. It causes environmental catastrophe. A whale died in Thailand recently. It vomitted plastic bags while dying. Sea birds dive down mistaking plastics for shellfish. They feed their chick with this disastrous food. They perish, as do camels, cows and turtles, in all corners of the world.

Single-use plastic is an added economic disaster. Who will swim on the wonderful beaches of Goa, Sri Lanka or Bali, if you have to crawl through a sea of plastics? For this reason, tourist-dependent Indonesia declared plastic pollution as a major economic threat to the nation.

Plastics find  their way  into our bodies. We breath plastics, we drink plastic, we eat plastics. Bigger plastic items seep into our bodies as microplastics. Fish carries plastics. Even the most pristine waters of the world, in the Himalayas or the Arctic now contain microplastics. We don’t know exactly how microplastics will affect the human body. But no one has suggested it is good for us.

Fortunately, we know how to solve the plastic crisis. The solution doesn’t involve costly high tech or impossible international diplomacy. Every nation can act, without looking over the shoulder asking what others are doing. I have joined Afroz for many clean ups in Mumbai. Plastic pollution, different from climate, is at the core of national and local crisis. India can act to clean up in the spirit of Swacch Bharat. Other nations can do the same.

The cleanest nation in the world is the most improbable place. In small, poor, landlocked Rwanda you cannot find a single piece of garbage in the streets.The capital Kigali is absolutely clean. “All Rwandans keep clean at home;” president Paul Kagame told me. “We just needed to transform that spirit to the community at large.”

The solution is three fold.

We should prohibit all single-use plastics we do not need. Let us simply ban straws, plastic cutlery, plastic cups and bags. This is what the Indian government has done even if its not yet fully respected everywhere. The European Union has done the same. We can all drink straight from a normal glass, without straws. The average north American uses 600 straws a year. Does it make them more happy? There is no need to wait. Lets just do it!

Additionally, we can be a lot more innovative. Straws can be made from bamboo or from paper. Indians have through millenniums eaten from plates made of banana leaves. All over the planet startups are trying to make products from potatoes, sugar canes and many other natural materials. If we throw away natural products, they will disintegrate in nature. Like a banana skin.

But still we may end up with many plastic products which are useful and not so easy to replace. During the covid pandemic , plastic curtain was the first line of defence against the disease. A normal car contains many kilos of plastics, it makes the car lighter and it consumes less energy. These plastics must be brought in and recycled.

If you walk along the Mithi river in Mumbai, you will never see plastic bottles. The reason is simple. The bottles have value and ragpickers will sell them to supplement their income. Only the plastics without value pollute our beautiful beaches and rivers. All countries should introduce Extended Producer Responsibility. A company which contributes to the plastic crisis should also be held responsible for funding and innovating the solution. With Extended Producer Responsibility companies will be engaged in driving the technology for change. They will have to pay a levy on plastics which governments can use to organise plastic collection and pay for large scale recycling.

What started at Versova Beach in Mumbai has become a global movement. A young Sri Lankan Nishanka De Silva started Zero Plastics movement in the midst of the economic meltdown of his home country. Incredibly, young  Sri Lankans turned out in droves to support the movement and making it a great success.

The Indian city of Indore has been repeatedly rewarded as the cleanest city of India. Its time we make all Indian cities like Indore. On world environment day - lets join hands to beat plastic pollution.

(Erik Solheim is former Minister of Climate and the Envrionment of Norway and former UN Environment Executive Director.)