Garbage eye-sore, its everywhere!

Sahan Randula Dikkumbura

Every time I walk through our city roads in Sri Lanka, bags of rotten food and trash are being dumped every day, almost in any corner on either side of the roads. Its a stink bomb that can distract us easily.

Its a shame how people just hang up these coloured polyester bags in front of their gates and walls! Where is the garbage service? Why can’t the garbage collectors come around every day to every single house at a certain time to collect the smelly waste? Is it because they are just too lazy to work for the society or because they don’t get paid enough?

If the garbage collectors actually came regularly, our responsibility would just be to keep the trash outside our gate every morning before going to work or leaving the house. It can be done by dumping the rubbish into a proper, solid trash bin that comes with a lid so that cats won’t be able to see what’s special for lunch today.

Is it that hard to be a good citizen? The young and the old generation just don’t care about the effects of proper and improper waste disposal.

Dumping the garbage in non-biodegradable materials such as these polythene bags leads to many issues, for example the ongoing dengue disease that keeps killing lives of young children and adults; this is because polythene bags are a good breeding ground for mosquitoes and germs, when we throw it in the soil it will easily damage the plant life as it contains harmful substances.

If we preserve food items in the colourful polythene bag, its also dangerous because the colour of the bag contains the chemicals like lead and the cadmium which damages human health, also when it is being thrown into our beaches; it harms the aquatic and marine life. People who don’t know about these affects may even burn the polythene in the presence of air so that the dumping of waste will be reduced, this release gases that cause cancer and let’s not forget atmospheric pollution.

Yes, polythene bags are very useful for our everyday lives. We carry groceries, meat and fish; it reduces food wastage and is portable since it is made of lightweight material, but we must take a green turn in order to have a better life and make our Motherland a better place to live in.

It’s the Government’s objective to ban these polythene bags and to introduce new replacements such as reusable net bags made of strong fibre or jute bags. These bags are used for carrying groceries in developing countries such as Bangladesh; it can then be damped and be used to clean furniture or wash dishes.

The polythene bags can only be used to carry meat and fish. Recycled paper bags are also another solution to make peace with our one of a kind environment.

Small ideas like these can make a big difference for our country and our people. It might be a minor issue to us and the Government, but as citizens of Sri Lanka we all should seriously wake up to these problems since the civil war is over.