Are we really giving back enough to all the amenities that this nature and environment provides us with?

I think this day as environmental day is a reminder for all of us to give back and conserve our environment.

I was traveling yesterday when I saw a very unfortunate image of a cow chewing plastic. And sadly, it's not a rare sight, in India atleast.

Cows who look for food on the streets end up consuming these plastics, as they are mixed with peels of fruits, vegetables, and other things. Several studies have proven that cows that eat plastic eventually stop eating their regular food. Plastic affects their internal organs and gets collected inside their body. Eventually, they are not able to give milk, and even if they do, it’s loaded with toxic chemicals like dioxins.

Degradable covers are fine, but when the food is inside plastic bags or covers, the animals can smell it, and hence, they attempt to eat it. Calling it a ‘slow poison,’ the vet said that in monogastric animals, that are, mammals with single compartment stomachs such as humans, dogs, cats, and horses, death will be instant.

Along India’s rivers, there are thousands of temples, villages and towns, where untreated sewage and garbage flows in the water. Hundreds of kilometres downstream, garbage and plastic are deposited at places where wildlife feeds and drinks. Many animals die a painful and unobserved death. An elephant was found dead with 750 kg plastic inside its stomach. Turtles, fish, birds, wild pigs, no animal can escape!!

Performing rumenotomies is not the answer to the plastic cow, only a total ban on plastics and removal of animals from the garbage-dump will solve the problems. We continue the surgeries as it is a life-saving procedure for the individual animal. As a pilot project, funded by The Kindness Trust, Australia, it gives us more information about the problems, the surgeries and the rate of survival.