"On your mark, get set, go!!" when and how did that happen?

 Hey, hope you're doing well! Sending strength and warm hugs if you are struggling to do well.

A lot of times, there are certain things, events, people, even strangers, situations that open up our mind toward something particular we had never just noticed.

In my story, I was not the kind of person who claimed to care about environment as a kid, now that I think back, nature does not need caring or protecting, it will find a way out of all this crisis on it's own terms if humans don't, well back to the main point. It has been less than a decade that I got interested to a whole new spectrum.

During the final year of my undergraduate studies, I met a guy who thought I and my classmates and few juniors should join this youth-led campaign to bann single use plastic bags in capital city and other two districts, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur.

"No Thanks! I Carry My Own Bag" name itself sounded really cool. 

The day I along with my two college juniors visited their work station. I was so so so impressed.

I never saw such cool and young people talking about environmental problems like plastic bags in a fancy location near office of the President, Baluwatar.

Made me want to visit them again. So we decided, we could participate in this campaign and also show our engagement as a part of the college practicum. 

Although, we were supposed to visit two days a week, our visit to the campaign became frequent and more than twice a week.

Although, I was personally fascinated by their work culture initially, later I started exploring the gravity of the cause that all of those young minds like mine were working constantly towards.

As a young mind, I never saw problems in the environment. Schooling I come from definitely enforced a positive attitude like not throwing away any kinds of waste out in the streets, to put wastes always on the dustbins. 

In addition to that, I spent my entire childhood and my teenage life inside my hometown. It is culturally rich city. surrounded by hills all around. Being the smallest district and the city as well, I never saw any problems related to environment in particular. Usually clean streets, walk-able city, enough spaces for children to play, youth to hangout, old ones to share their experiences, even locals have enough public spaces in their neighborhood to dry out the agricultural products like rice, wheat.

My perception of cleaning our environment was narrowed to disposing the wrappers or any kinds of wastes in the dustbins only. 

By the time I got involved as a campaigner, I was shocked what a mess it was and more glad that I had the privilege to understand real problems.

Gradually, the campaign to ban single use plastic bags taught me lot of things and life lessons as well. 

A single use plastic bag lives more than 1000 years and starts to decompose then after. The history of first ever invented plastics are not really old. That means the first ever manufactured plastics exist somewhere within this world either in the soil, water, or our bodies in the form of microplastics. Or either burnt and released toxins in the atmosphere. 

Shockingly, a single use plastic bag is used for 13 minutes on average. 

For our 13 minutes of convenience, we are actually costing life time of our generation and the following.

Worse thing is, all these plastic bags are thrown away with other wastes that come from households and other sectors. These bags are designed in such a way that they can be rarely used twice or more. 

All such single use plastic bags mixed with other wastes are dumped in the landfill without any sorting. 

Have you guys ever seen liquid that smells disgustingly foul when your vegetables are left to compost? Within tonnes of such wastes mixed with single use plastic bags and other plastic wastes, chemicals within plastics start reacting with that liquid we talked about, which is called leachate.

Such liquids generally flow down, get mixed up to the nearby water sources. Cities like Kathmandu dump all the wastes collected from different sectors in the nearby communities that are poor, marginalized. The poor management of garbage are costing health of the people living in these communities.

Looking back, it seems like just a single use plastic bag. Yet the consequences, it is leaving on our environment is massive. The social and the health costs are far away than our imagination.

Aren't all these facts enough to boggle your mind?

With all these information coming daily into my conscience, I was moved and could not stop questioning my choices.

Ever since my awakening as a nature lover commenced, I was on it!! 

That's me in the middle celebrating with all other campaigners on the first day of a single use plastic bag free Kathmandu valley.