Meghalaya might be buried under mounds of plastics
By Barnes Mawrie
Perhaps one of the greatest curses that have come into our city apart from the socio-political hazards that we face, is the silent invasion of potato chips which come to us in different flavours and packages. This is what I call an invasion on our natural environment as well as on our food habits. Potato chips have become the craze of every person, child and adult alike. School children and college students spend much of their pocket money on potato chips. It is a good time pass especially when you are on a long journey or when you go perambulating in the parks or in the country side. These chips are tasty and they have the potency of inducing addiction in the consumers. No wonder, children who get used to such taste keep pestering their parents to buy more. Potato chips to my knowledge have a twofold hazard on us:
First of all, they have a health hazard on us. Addiction to potato chips is disastrous for one’s health. Like any junk food, they create obesity and can lead to many other health issues. Besides too much consumption of potato chips kills our natural appetite for food and this can be health hazardous for children who are supposed to eat their daily food. I have seen children who are addicted to potato chips and consequently refuse to eat their meals.
Secondly and perhaps the point I would like to emphasize more in this article, is the environmental hazard that potato chips are having on our natural environment. It is enough to go on Monday to Golf Links and there you will invariably witness a sea of chip packets littering the beautiful green sprawl. On weekends in particular the Golf Links roads are infested with roadside shops selling chains of potato chips and other similar stuff. People buy them or else they would not come with a huge supply of these chips. I do not complain about people buying and eating these chips, but what I am concerned about (as other right thinking persons would do), is the way people dispose of these chip packets. They are irresponsibly thrown into the field without any concern for the environment.
Sad to say but even parents seem to forget their duty of training their children not to pollute the environment. Even grown up college students commit the same ecological crime. One wonders what kind of education our colleges are giving to these youngsters that such a basic civic sense is not fostered in them. What is more harmful to the environment is the fact that these chips packets are made of non-degradable materials which are also toxic to the environment. God only knows how much of these chip packets are dumped into the Wah Umkhrah and Umshyrpi rivers and how much of them are deposited in Barapani lake. The potato chips companies are making money at the expense of our lives. These chip packets have invaded even the rural homes in the remotest parts of our State. Some of them have even reached pristine rivers and forests in the rural areas. Perhaps picnickers are largely responsible for this or else the villagers themselves must have acquired this bad habit.
It is my sincere conviction that the citizens of our State must rise up to this challenge. We need to pressurize the Government to ban these chips in their present packaging. If these chips are to stay at all, they ought to be packaged in degradable materials, namely in paper packages. If the State authorities could take up the matter with the production companies, perhaps this issue could be settled. But what is urgent now is that we stop the culture of littering chip packets or any garbage at all. I would also suggest that if the Golf Club is not doing anything about providing dust bins in the Golf Course, the Municipality could take up the responsibility of providing them or impinge upon the responsible group/s to do so. I have a dream of a “chips free country where people are liberated from such addiction, where junk food has become a thing of the past and where traditional food is loved and preferred and a simple life-style is chosen.”