Plastic is both a short term and long term threat to every life form on the planet. They wither overtime and break down into smaller particles which litter the environment, disturb the normal manoeuvrability of organisms, enter the food chain and finally cause health conditions in all organisms.

Plastic particles have been confirmed inside pork¹, mussels², beverages³, honeybees⁴ and human womb⁵ already. It is only a matter of time before the long terms effects materialise — primarily cancer.

Waste management can mitigate this problem of plastic pollution but cannot eliminate it entirely for the following reasons.

• You must build the waste management system on every place humans can live; which is the entire globe. The building and maintenance of such an infrastructure is currently impractical politically and economically.
• While it is easy to commit oneself to the habit of proper waste disposal, it is a herculean task to commit the entire human race to such a habit. Therefore, it is better to follow a system that makes littering harmless than count on the masses to do the right thing with the toxic products.
• Even if we eradicate the habit of littering, what must be done of the collected wastes is still a dilemma. Some can be recycled but recycling comes with its own ecological and economical problems⁶. Others simply cannot be recycled.
• Micro plastics from plastic products are unknowingly inhaled and eaten during the lifetime of the product — ie, during its use. Waste management is not even relevant in such cases.

For these reasons, the ultimate and the only way to deal with plastic wastes is to not generate them in the first place. Although this is not really a way to deal with the existing plastic wastes, it is the only long term way to deal with them.

Speaking of existing plastic wastes in the environment, it is highly improbably that we can ever clean them up completely given the tiny size of some plastic wastes and the extent of geography that plastic wastes have forayed into — oceans, rivers, lakes, farm lands, forests, country side, landfills, city dumps, drainages, inside organisms, etc.

Our only solution is to collect as much plastic wastes from these places as possible and put it into recycling or other innocuous ways of disposal. Many universities and non-profit organisations are developing ways to collect plastic wastes from far reaching places like oceans.

On environment days and awareness days, everyone is a hero for a day or acts like one at least. If you truly care about the environment, change your lifestyle to generate only wastes that can be safely disposed off. Plastics aren't one of them.

• Avoid using plastics as much as possible. You really don't need them in most cases — we just got used to the convenience that cheap plastics gave. You can instead cultivate certain habits to compensate for the inconvenience such as always carrying a cotton or jute shopping bag.
• If you cannot avoid plastics — such as when you buy digital products, home appliances and automobiles — do not litter or bury the waste but send it for recycling. Although recycling isn't clean, it is the cleanest way to dispose plastics currently.
• As a consumer, you can influence the producers and manufacturers to adopt alternatives to plastics in their manufacturing and packaging processes.

On the other hand, if you don't really care about the environment, we really hope that there is no judgement day, for the planetary crime you commit are unforgivable.