Although plastics in general may not be able to be shunned entirely, single use plastic needs to be banned and the public, if they care enough, must fight for that. This was the message that emerged at a panel discussion at St Anthony’s College here today on the subject.
St Anthony’s students came up with a communication strategy, as part of their coursework, entitled ‘SAC Against SUP Bottles’ (SUP stands for single use plastic). The social awareness campaign spearheaded by the college’s students was rolled out over several days and concluded today.
Teacher in charge Rajani K Chhetri said that the core agenda of the campaign was to raise awareness and consciousness against single use plastic bottles and encourage the adoption of sustainable and healthy habits, such as carrying a reusable bottle and using the water filters set up on the college campus.
The campaign was organized by sixth semester Media Tech students for their Communication for Development paper and ran from April 25 up to today.
To mark the culmination of the campaign, the students also organised a talk, ‘Waste to Grace’, by Bankitlang Nongbri, founder of Eco-Ri, and a panel discussion on the theme ‘Single Use Plastic Water Bottles – An Absolute Monstrosity’.
Panelists consisted of environmentalist HH Mohrmen, Jiwat Vaswani, executive director of Bethany Society Carmo Noronha and assistant professor of Shillong College Reema V Diengdoh.
Mohrmen said that, according to science, it will take 300 years for plastic to decompose, so plastic is unavoidable for this generation.
The future of the next generation depends on the present one, whether they will have clean water Vaswani said things can change if one is determined to see it through.
Diengdoh, meanwhile, said it is difficult to convince and educate the youth and if we want to see change, the youth need to restart the habit of carrying reusable water bottles.
