Over 3.8 tons of polythene used as book covers

Priyanka Kurugala

In Sri Lanka, approximately 3.8 million tons of polythene is used and discarded annually to cover exercise books and text books, Post Graduate Institute of Archaeology Natural Scientist Dr Wasantha Sena Welianga said.

The weight of a polythene sheet needed to cover an exercise book is 6 grams and a textbook requires about 12 grams. If a student has 10 exercise books and 10 textbooks, he or she will use 180 grams of polythene. There are around 4.3 million schoolchildren in the country. At least half of them (21,500,000) use polythene to cover their books and this means a total consumption of 3,870,000 kg, he explained.

For many years environmentalists and Sri Lankans fight against the use of polythene. Under the present country leader many significant changes are in place. “Therefore, this is the best time to act against the use of polythene on a large-scale with the President taking a firm hand,” he emphasized.

”The country, needs a strong ‘No polythene covers for books’ policy to prohibit the use of polythene for book covers in schools. This would make children discard the use of polythene,” he added.

If authorities could introduce this new practice, it would be a great leap in environmental conservation in Sri Lanka. With this effort thousands of tons of polythene would remain in shops without polluting the environment. We have been talking and discussing for a long time and never attempted to find an effective solution. If we do not act wisely the country would be the garbage dump of the Indian Ocean very soon, he stressed.

“We repeat famous concepts of environment conservations every day but not many of them are practised. One way for positive environmental conservation is to practise the 3R method. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. This is the simplest and most effective way to practise solid waste management,” he said.