Can we lead our lives without using Paper & Plastic?

Of course we can lead our lives without using paper and plastic. We just need to use the alternates such as

Thanks for the referral Sonam,

Plastic today has become an integral part of our lives, we are practically addicted to it. The question you have posted is very interesting as first we should determine what all comes by plastic products which is essential and difficult to change and what are the products which we can substitute for others.

In case of carry bags we can always make cloth or jute bags, for food containers we can use steel, and earthen wares. The idea is that we can substitute one product for other, it is all there.

But being human we tend to go for beauty, we try to judge the product by how attractive it is, and not by how much destructive it is.

I think that substitutes can be found and put in use, if not in totality then still to quite a lot of things.

Yes, We can definitely live without plastic. Let us go two decades back, when everybody use to carry cloth bags along with them whenever they go for shopping, Usage earthen pots for water storage, tiles for roofing,  woodes racks instead of plastic cabinets etc. For easy convenience and easy availability of plastic bags we are tend to use them. The government should totallly ban the plastic in almost all walks of life. As a good samaritan we should follow not to use plastic as much possible.

When it comes to paper usage we can totally avoid it. But alternatives like usage e-mails or virtual communications have already geared up in reducing the paper usage. If we can not stop usage of paper, one should think of alternatives like growing more and more trees. One should think of using pulp from dry area plants like aloe to,bagas or any other waste/residual materail manufacture paper. One good aspect of paper, it is bio-degradable. One should think of re-cycling the paper wherever possible.

We can reduce the use of paper with computer science. Same time we should produce paper and replace plastic with the by products of the living plants like cotton or similar products without destroying the living plants to help the nature to control the global warming.

In many areas effective alterntive to paper has been discovered e.g. e-mail, laptops , mobiles etc.  Plastics due to its inherent feature is mainly used for packaging, storage etc.

I am sure once an alternative is discoveres that provides similar feature/characteristics at same or lower cost.. the shift will happen. And it has already started.

We can very much live happily without the use of Plastic bags. Plastic bags have moved from convenients to nessecity of our life with passing time. This has brought changes in our environments and causing hazardous problem in our society. They are not able to decomposed and having the life of approx 25+ years before they can decomposed naturally.

So each plastic bag is a hazard problem to our lives and society for nearly 25 years.

We minimuise the usage of plasic bags, we save our environments from hazard poisonus gases and live longer with clean and grean society.

Imagine days we lived without plastics. Society used Plant originated water pots for storing liquids(Snack gourd, Bumpkin, Beetle nut leaves etc). When demand increased the necessity to augument the idea came- the petro product polyethelene storage /bags. On business cycle, community started manufacturing plastics because people only considered convenience but not the harm to society/ Environ. But what we face today is the worst scenario imposed by plastic bags usage & indiscreminate disposal by ordinary man.

Firstly it is not degrable as we see in paper

secondly, it harms the animals eating it inadvertantly

thirdly, environmental concern. Because its nondegrable ,the fibres exist on soil & get entapped in lungs etc during normal breathing.

we can ennumerate the hazards of plastic endlessly but what concern us is how to control it ,

possibilities are,

create more awareness among ordinary men about plastics hazards

encorage every folk to use his own bags for shopping preferrably, biodegrable such as jute bags, cloth bags etc.

introduce legal sanction in use of plastics

introduce acceptable way of disposa for plastic if allowed.

control the manufacture of plastics because its business, its difficult to control it.

ofcorse civic amenities such as municipalities to collect garbage separately to better disposal etc.

on the long run community should know how to encourage business without affecting its very existance and preserving the environ.

its peoples resposibility to strive business and environ mutually agreeing on.

i dont see our lives without paper ........

.............bt definitely plastic is replacable. it should be banned. it id destroying our planet.

and atleast we all should recycle the plastic items and if possible should  go to some alternatives.........

Firstly i wud like to compliment Sonam for bringing up this debate !

Yes, it is definitely possible to avoid plastic and paper usage in our daily lives.

Each one of us starting NOW shud make a practice to carry a fabric (washable) hand bag for shopping daily needs.

I'm doing it since long time and refuse take a carry bag from the shop keeper. Pls all of you atleast to some extent start off from now AND YOU'LL SEE THE CHANGE !

yes.we can use Biodegradable Plastics n papers as an alternative material.

Just imagine a world when there will be no paper or plastics products are available. Then at that time are we going to end our life..No not at all we will be looking for alternatives at that time. so when in that situation we can search for alternatives then why not now. We all know that a little effort can make the difference. So move ahead and look around yourself one can definately find the solution such as increase of mobile, computer, electronic devices in place of paper and cloth bags in place of plastic carry bag. The work is done.

yes we can live without plastic but not without paper, in early days we prepared the paper bags from news papers . presently there is no use so the people can get better price for there raddi,and we can use patta for using etablesso things can be streamlined if we think for heart to solve the problem.

Paper Money has been replaced by a plastic card! The material needs to be changed.

Shopping bags are slowly becoming replaced by recyclable.

People are practicing more and more the paperless office concept.

I dont know if we will reach absolute non-use of paper but WE MUST DEFINITELY AIM AT BANNING THE USE OF PLASTIC. 

It has become a serious environmental hazard.

To answer your question Sonam, I definitely hope we do.

Sonam,

This question really needs "out of the box" thinking. Just imagine our ancestors just a few generations back lived without these items, with life which was equally if not much happier than ours. But in this modern age, we need to find solutions by getting out of our usual rut.

Why not start a tweet topic, streaming with brain stormed suggestions?

actually NO - we need them - but they can be manufactured from alternative materials, even plastic can come from non-petro sources - we need the flexibility these materials provide - just must manf them in a more sustainable way

Well Sonam u r right But it will take more time to find out alternatives of it.

Dear Sonam,

Your This Debate is Almost Depend on Our Habits.

If We Can Make some Option/Substitute  of This We Can.

We Have to  Make More Plantation to Manage this Issue.