Celebrating Environmental Week – Say No To Plastic For Ecofriendly Lifestyle

Jimmy and Janak Mcgilligan Foundation for Sustainable Development organised the week long dialogue on environment theme ‘Collective Action for Combating Plastic Pollution’ given by UNEP for the year 2025.

The 6th day of this one week’s long public awareness dialogue was held in Vaidya Shefali’s Ayurveda Hospital Kaivalya Wellness Hub, Silver Spring. The topic was- “Say No to Plastic for a eco friendly lifestyle”. At the beginning of the program, Dr. (Mrs.) Janak Palta Mcgilligan started with prayer followed by sharing how she learnt about environment through the tribal girls and while spreading awareness about Naru disease in Jhabua district. She also shared that in 1992 when she visited Rio-D-Janeiro for the first time, she got to know about Earth’s environmental state.

Since then, she again defined her life that she would work with all living beings with goodwill starting from herself. She worked with barren land twice in her life and found prosperity and abundance through it. Dr. Janak Palta ji suggested that the entire Silver springs society will not give water in plastic bottles in any collective program, but will give in glasses. The facility of utensils-banks can be made available at the level of the society from where utensils can be provided.

Devendra Singh Tomar, president of the Silver Spring Resident Society, was special guest of the program, shared how he is consistently trying to reduce plastic use.

After that, the keynote speaker was Professor Jayashree Sikka, retired Botany teacher from Gujarati College. She gave detailed information related to plastic. She shared about how the death of cow was because of 60 kg plastic found in the stomach of the cow. With this painful news, we should think again how to get rid of plastic! Prof Jayashree Sikka informed us that plastic is being used from transportation to toys, to food and clothing. India is producing 18% of worlds plastic production.
Packaging constitutes a large part of plastic consumption. Online purchasing of food and other consumables is coming in plastic. The micro plastic enters are body too. After eating, we throw these plastic utensils. Where does it go? It goes in the seas and in the ground.
3 large ‘garbage soup’ have been made in the seas of the earth, the largest ‘garbage soup’ is 3 times larger than the area of France in the Pacific Ocean. Plastic is being used in farming for ‘mulching’, which is mixed in the soil itself. What can all of us do for this:- Reduce, Replace, Recycle, Recover, Redesign, Refuse.

Vaidya Shefali then shared in her talk that sustainable lifestyle begins with our day-night cycle. Our rhythm should be met with the sun’s rhythm in waking up in the morning and sleeping in the night. In the morning, you can use steel, or glass bottle instead of plastic utensils to drink water and keep water. Instead of plastic brush, one can opt for wood brush. Instead of toothpaste we can choose alternatives of herb powders and herb twigs such as Neem. For bringing these changes firmly in one’s life, one needs to be mentally prepared to experiment consciously. Try cloth bags, wooden combs, and dried luffas in your life and be the trend setter for everyone! Choose organic food that is being made available in Jaivik Setu of Indore city. Instead of spending on wearing and buying Gold one needs to eat quality food like gold. ‘
After this, the book written by Vaidya Shefali on Ayurveda called ‘Harmonics of Life’ was inaugurated.
In the end, 30 people pledged how they would reduce the use of plastic – avoid drinking water from plastic bottles and will free their kitchen from plastic.