By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

Jammu and Kashmir just approved a large-scale waste management project at Achan, and officials are calling it a milestone. 

Scientific collection, transport and processing beat the alternative that has defined the valley for years: garbage dumped into open fields, burned in villages, left to settle on riverbanks. 

Praise for Achan is fair, but praise should stop short of relief, though, because Achan answers the wrong question. 

The real question sitting underneath it, the one nobody in government has been forced to answer yet, is whether Kashmir plans to manage plastic waste forever, or whether it plans to stop so much plastic from entering the valley in the first place.

Anyone who drives through Kashmir today already knows the answer. Wrappers line the roadsides, streams pull bottles and food packets downstream, and irrigation canals choke on plastic bags.

Tourist sites once defined by natural beauty now compete with litter for attention. Villages without regular collection burn plastic or dump it straight into fields and water bodies, sending it into soil, air and eventually the food chain as microplastic. 

The problem has spread past cities and into farms, forests, lakes and rivers. The standard government response, build a bigger facility, collect more waste, process it faster, treats a symptom while leaving the source untouched.

Picture a leaking........

© Kashmir Observer