PET menace

A few weeks ago, we visited a beach resort near Alibag for our annual outbound. A few kilometers before our destination we drove past an area that seemed to have become the de-facto landfill for the area. What struck me was the number of PET bottles and plastic bags that littered the ground. Organic waste was either far less voluminous or the friendly neighbourhood dogs and pigs were taking care of it in good order.

I momentarily lamented the use of plastic bags and PET bottles in our society and soon forgot about them. The next day, we had an event organized on the lawns of the resort and given that it was a humid day, the resort had arranged water for us on the lawns.

But here's the thing you see. They had laid out 250 ml PET bottles for us. Each of us probably consumed more than 4 of these bottles on that one evening, and I am sure the empty ones were carted to that same landfill the next day.

An outright ban on all PET bottles would be draconian I suppose. But I wonder if a ban on selling packaged drinking water in PET bottles smaller than 1 liter might be a good idea.