How my family and I have banned plastic in our home : Earth Day Special Essay (2nd Prize Winner) by Enakshi Pramanik, Grade VII, Funlish Language School

 

Nowadays, plastics are very common all over the world, but these plastics can lead to severe health diseases.

 It’s an incident which happened about three years ago. It was my first day at school in class 4. It was a bright sunny day. I was going to school, early morning, when I saw a malodorous garbage dump at the side of the road which made our environment poisonous. It was fully dumped with polythene bags, plastic bottles and rotten garbage.

That day, our school bus got late due to traffic. So, after reaching my school, my friends and I rushed in so that we did not have to wait till the gate reopened after the prayer.

Then, after two classes were over, the bell rang and the time came to start the geography class. We were all very excited to know who our new session’s geography teacher was.

 After our teacher entered the classroom, everyone shouted “Hurray! it’s our previous year’s geography teacher!” Her name was Soma Bhattacharya. She was an ideal teacher who taught students in a funny way. She was as sweet as sugar and was very caring towards her students.

“Hello, students, how are you? I missed you all so much” she said very politely.

We answered “We all are fine, Ma’am. How are you?”

She answered “I passed through a very bad time during the session break. I was having breathing problems due to the polluted environment”

 “So, let’s study on the topic ‘environment’” she said.

She taught us that the main reason behind our polluted environment was plastic! After that, she gave us a project work on the topic “SAY NO TO PLASTIC”.

After reaching home, I took a nap and started working on the project. While making the poster, I thought that my family members and I might suffer from breathing issues as well just like my teacher. I felt bad for her. 

After three months, one day, I felt very sick. At that time, I was on my summer holidays. My parents took me to the doctor’s chamber. I was cured in a day. The doctor said, “Due to the pollution, some pollutants went into her lungs which resulted in such a dangerous situation”.

Suddenly, I remembered my teacher’s illness and realised that I had faced a similar situation.

From then on, my family members and I stopped using plastic things. We use jute bags for shopping and steel bottles for drinking water.