Abstract:
According to the Environment ministry, Pakistan is responsible for generating about 20 million tons of solid waste per annum and that number is increasing by 2.4 percent each year. As stated by United Nations, if our generation of waste per person continues to increase at this exponential rate, the Earth’s lower atmospheric temperature could rise more than 4 C by the end of the 21st century. With Pakistan having the world’s 5th largest economy, we are major contributors to the world waste cycle. With extreme temperatures that the world is now facing, our only way back to a more stable environment is through sustainable waste recycling systems. One of the major contributors to the Solid Waste that Pakistan produces is; paper. Paper is one of the most used materials not only in its purest form but when amalgamated with other materials like plastic to make products like disposable paper cups etc. According to statistics, 50 billion paper cups end up in the landfill and each cup taking 20 years to decompose. With these alarming rising statistics, the solution to this is that the recycling instead of being done in the outskirts of urban cities is brought to light to the general public by incorporating this recycling system into their everyday lives. In order to get the masses to adopt to the culture of recycling, the transition of a person opting for recycling as a one-time thing to a collective societal behavior, the human-system interaction should be simplified to the point that it should not feel like a task that they have to do to go out of their way but it becomes part of their lifestyles and becomes secondary to their nature.
