The Indian city of Lachen will introduce bamboo bottles to save an environment besieged by disrespectful tourists
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himNo more plastic! Lachen, the city of Sikkim - in northeastern India - will introduce soon bamboo bottles to save an environment besieged by tourists. More than eight years ago, it was the first city in India to completely ban packaged drinking water bottles. Now it's time to take another green turn.
Because? The city has a small population of around 2.500, mostly from the Lachengpa community, but is frequented daily by hordes of not always respectful tourists. Here, in fact, at 2.750 meters high among the rhododendrons, the snow-capped Himalayan hills, the aquamarine lakes and a wonderful population of red pandas, thousands of visitors leave an excessive amount of waste every day.
It was precisely the abandoned plastic bottles that pushed Lachen to introduce the ban and among other things Sikkim, the Federal State to which it belongs, was among the first state in the country to take measures against the use of plastic, introducing measures restrictive as far back as 1998. In 2016 it then banned the use of packaged drinking water in government offices and at all public events.
The explosion of tourism has actually led to the construction of 30 hotels in 15 years in the city of Lachen alone and several organizations are pursuing the ban on plastic, such as the Lachen Tourism Development Committee (LTDC), and the Dzumsa, a local self-government system originating from the northern area of Sikkim.
“We started having problems with plastics in 2006, so we take waste management seriously. The amount of waste in Lachen, mainly due to the large number of tourists, threatens to turn the city into a landfill. We don't have a recycling system. In 2011, as plastic continued to flood Lachen, we made the decision to ban water bottles. In 2018 we introduced a ban on envelopes - Pipon (the village chief who presides over the Dzumsa) Gyatso Lachenpa explained to the Indian Express. The cities of Lachung and Chungthang also followed Lachen's example ”.
Gyatso says he contacted WWF and helped Lachen introduce a plastic ban. Two monitoring committees carry out random checks on the vehicles of tourists entering Lachen to make sure no one is carrying packaged water. Among other things, "the water comes from the rivers of Sikkim and is much healthier because it is tested in the laboratory". And that's why tourists will soon be given eco-friendly bamboo bottles.
Lachen has applied for thousands of bamboo bottles. “We will introduce them later this year at the Lachen Losar festival. 1000 bottles are not many but it is a start ". Chewang Lachenpa, former member of LTDC explains: “We have the task of preserving our cultural identity and the environment around us. When we started we didn't know how to manage waste and found that most of it ended up in forests and rivers. 60% consisted of plastic bottles. Now if we find tourists with plastic bottles their companion, usually a local guide, is fined ". The problem now is other types of waste such as i packets of cookies: “By banning these foods, we would directly affect our economy. Plastic bags are not a big problem since residents use wicker bags or baskets ”.
©The State online
Sikkim, known as the Land of Flowers, is known all over the world for its favorable choice of organic farming. Over the last few years, over 75 hectares of land have been converted to certified organic farming following the guidelines of the National Program for organic production.
To "invent" the bamboo bottles was the Indian Dhritiman Borah who almost two years ago began to make these bottles aiming to use only biodegradable and natural materials:
Bamboo bottle
Posted by Dhritiman Borah on Monday, August 27, 2018
Fonte: Indian Express
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