india

Updated: Aug 28, 2019 10:37 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday wrote a thank you note to actor Aamir Khan who a day earlier had lauded the PM’s initiative to ban single-use plastic.

Addressing his monthly radio show ‘Mann ki baat’, the PM had urged people to kick start a new revolution against plastic from October 2, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. This was a follow up to his appeal of a plastic-free India made during his Independence Day address earlier this month.

“Thank you @aamir_khan for the valuable support to the movement to eliminate usage of single use plastic. Your encouraging words will inspire others to strengthen the movement as well,” the Prime Minister tweeted on Wednesday.

Earlier, on Tuesday, the actor had strongly backed the initiative saying, “The initiative by the Hon’ble PM @narendramodi to curb ‘single use plastic’ is an effort all of us should strongly support. It’s up to each of us to make sure we stop using ‘single use plastic’.”

According to a 2018 statement of then Human resource Development minister Prakash Javadekar 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated every day in India, 9,000 tonnes are collected and recycled, but 6,000 tonnes of plastic waste remain littered.

Thank you @aamir_khan for the valuable support to the movement to eliminate usage of single use plastic.



Your encouraging words will inspire others to strengthen the movement as well. https://t.co/AwKi1SzXde — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 28, 2019

This littered plastic makes its way into rivers, oceans and ground soil, polluting the environment, hampering regeneration of plants, blocking drains and canals and upsetting the ecosystems.

In a clean-up campaign in 2018 of 12 Himalayan states, volunteers picked up about four lakh pieces of plastic waste in a two-hour operation on May 26 in a battle against plastic pollution across Sikkim, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Assam.

More than 2.50 lakh (62.67%) waste items comprised wrappers of chips, candies, chewing gums and tobacco products. Experts say such wrappers, which are classified as multi-layered plastic, can’t be recycled and are not bio-degradable.