WALK through any sabzimandi in Pakistan at day’s end and the scene is hard to miss. Rotten vegetables, leftover fruit and discarded plastic bags lie scattered across the ground. Flies gather around piles of waste as shoppers and shopkeepers carry on. A plastic lifafa caught in a roadside drain has become so familiar that hardly anyone notices it. We have lived with rubbish so long that we have stopped seeing it. But the problem goes far beyond dirty streets. Pakistan’s waste crisis is not simply caused by careless people or growing cities. Years of poor planning, weak enforcement and ineffective municipal services have made the situation worse. Our cities are expanding, but waste systems have largely failed to keep pace. Smaller cities and rural areas often have even fewer resources.

The lifafa has become a common symbol of this failure. Governments have announced bans on single-use plastic bags several times, yet they remain widely used in markets. There are occasional inspections and crackdowns, but the same bags return. The problem is not merely a lack of laws. It is also weak enforcement and the absence of affordable alternatives. Without both, restrictions are unlikely to produce lasting change. The same pattern is visible across urban and rural Pakistan. In many places, there is no proper system to separate, recycle or........

© Pakistan Observer