How sustainable are our picnics?

So much has the entire valley to offer us that a life span falls short of it. Apart from the prominent and widely known places such as Gulmarg, Pahalgam, Sonmarg, etc, an increasing trend to explore the valley beyond that has been witnessed at a rapid scale.

Trekking and climbing up hills to witness the alluring beauty of the valley in the form of lakes, meadows, etc leaves one hypnotic. The murmuring sound of water fuses one with endless contentment, the vision visualizes the quadrilateral greenery that solaces eyes, and the tall and tough mountains remind us how insignificant our worries are.

The experience calms our existence. The following days, to some extent, we find ourselves more energetic and better to continue with our mundane schedules.

But, wait! Enough of cherishing imaginations! Let’s head to something more important now.

After leaving any picnic spot, did you just leave the place with those memories that only you as an individual will cherish? Was there nothing else that you could take for yourself and give back to that place?

You must be wondering what it could be, right? Sustainability, it is.

The general idea of sustainability connotes how much you have contributed to keeping anything in a better position, by working on a few odds and removing those conditions/things that were making it worse. In this case, I’m implying the question of how much you keep a picnic spot sustainable.

A sustainable picnic spot refers to the idea of leaving the spot in a better position. Having seen plastic bottles around, polythenes or excess food near riverbanks, trash bags lying in the middle of jungles and meadows, etc, required you to stop, pick, dump at the right place, and leave. Do you ever attempt to do it? Or did you just eat, meet, and leave?

If you adopted the former approach, you have done nothing in keeping the spot sustainable. Besides, there is a possibility that one may also contribute to the existing spot degradation. Let’s dwell further here.

Nothing is more exasperating to watch than seeing how people come with extreme enthusiasm to reach these places and take the best out of it, but degrade it to the worst level. Junk food covers, soft drink bottles, and other trash lying around these places speak levels about the person inside us, and how concerned we are about our place, and Allah’s blessing broadly.

Filling tummies is the first goal, and normalizing throwing waste and wrappers is the ultimate goal.

What makes the situation more bizarre is the foolishness of some people to make fun of those who try to contribute at least one step towards a sustainable spot. Some commonly observed remarks are: What would your throwing trash in a dustbin do? Majority is throwing it around anyway? What is this role of environmentalist that you have started…

Though people who genuinely care about this do and should not bother about such remarks, the question is about the mindset of those who put such questions forward.

People have been paying lakhs to reach these serene destinations and enjoy the plethora of beauty. And we have it so close and parallel to us, and yet we are contributing to its destruction, maybe gradually.

The time may not be far when we will lose it all like a morsel of sand from our hands, and then we can afford nothing but mute spectatorship.

Besides, its detrimental consequence in the form of climate change is more than a visible impact. Gradually, maybe, we will have to breathe toxic air, feel excessively humid summers, and console ourselves about the fact of having no clean green space to go and relax.

To put home in order, we can carry trash bags with us whenever we leave for a picnic, and make sure all the trash is put in it. If we don’t get a proper dumping place around the spot, we can carry it back with us and dump it wherever we find the required place.

Having said that, it’s not being suggested that we should go to a tourist site and clean it entirely, but even if we can clean the portion where we are sitting and enjoying nature, would make us a contributor towards making that place a sustainable spot. We should normalize picking up plastic, bottles, wrappers, etc, around us and put it in the same trash bag that we got with us. Also, as a matter of social hygiene, we should consume junk on limits, so that what we have to dump is also limited.

In this way, we can contribute towards ecological picnic spots and extend the idea of sustainability.