Mamata urges people to end plastic pollution

Kolkata: In a tweet on the occasion of Earth Day, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has urged people to put an end to plastic pollution to ensure a clean environment.

"On the occasion of Earth Day, let us pledge to keep our environment clean. We can take a step in this direction by putting an end to plastic pollution," Banerjee tweeted on Sunday morning.

Earth Day 2018 is dedicated to providing the information and inspiration needed to change human attitude and behaviour about plastics fundamentally.

One of the bleakest stories of the year so far was the report of a six-ton sperm whale washing up on the shores of southern Spain with 64 pounds of plastic in its stomach, a disturbing sign of the alarming rate at which we're dumping plastics into the ocean.

The plastic crisis is a truly global one, and the numbers are staggering: A 2015 study found that between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic make it into the ocean from land each year. By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight.

Since plastic is synthetic, few natural processes break it down, allowing bags, straws, and packaging to linger for decades if not centuries. And we're not very good at containing it to landfills. About 32 percent of plastics make out into nature, where it often ends up in the bellies of fish, birds, and whales. And, as it turns out, potentially in our stomachs too.