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India Bans Plastic

India bans disposable plastic in its capital Delhi

India just issued a law that would help save its capital from pollution, they just banned all forms of disposable plastic.

The National Green Tribunal of India have issued a ban on plastic in the country’s capital, Delhi. The ban came into effect on January 1, 2017, and made it illegal to use any form of disposable plastic cutlery, bags and other.

The initiative will help restore some of the city’s heavily damaged ecosystem that has been plagued by mountains of non-degradable plastic that have polluted it beyond hazard.

River damaged by plastic pollution in India

A river heavily polluted by plastic in India.

India have been struggling with plastic waste for a long time now and have even affected the whole world. An Times of India article claims that the Asian country is responsible for 60 percent of the plastic dumped in the world’s oceans annually.

Due to the abundance of plastic, waste-to-energy plans found illegal ways to mass-burn it with incinerators, which then filled the skies with toxic smog. But in a few years hopefully, there won’t be as much plastic to find and burn, and pollution levels should drop.

The air quality in Delhi, is pretty bad compared to other cities around the world. According to the World Health Organization, a survey of 1600 world cities showed it to have the worst air quality than any other major city in the world. However, the two Indian cities of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, and Raipur in Chhattisgarh have worse air quality than Delhi.

They currently have it so bad, that reports claim that air pollution is responsible for the deaths of one and a half million people in India each year. The WHO also reports that the country has the world’s highest death rate from chronic respiratory diseases and asthma.

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