How Women are Restoring the Magical Waters of the River Ganges

The Ganges has been one of the world’s most iconic rivers for centuries, with its 1,600 miles of sacred waters flowing from smooth glaciers in Northern India all the way to the palm fringed shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh. The myth of the Ganges shares the tale of the goddess Ganga who descended from heaven to bathe in the river’s water in order to protect, purify and bring heaven to all those who join her in the calm river. With this myth declaring the Ganges a sacred place, millions of pilgrims join the local inhabitants on the river’s banks, using the water for bathing, drinking, fishing, watering crops and as a central element in spiritual rituals. Cities rising straight up from the river banks, such as Varanasi, have become melting pots of life and death, history and religion, devout rituals and multicolour celebrations. Yet this ancient part of Earth has one more addition in the 21st century: plastic.

Plastic has only been used widely in India over the last 20 to 25 years yet it has taken no time at all to mix with the Ganges’ magical river dolphins and the floating flowers and tealights which are given as offerings to Ganga. In fact, 1.2 billion pounds of discarded plastic travel down this famous river each year on their grand tour through India and Bangladesh. The plastic catastrophe in this region has occurred so quickly that the Hindi language still contains no word for plastic, whilst waste management systems have struggled to keep up with the pace of production. With landfills overflowing and recycling schemes struggling to collect waste from the cities’ maze of jumbled housing, the river now appears to be the main waste management system for the 400 million living on its banks as it swiftly whisks rubbish away from its owners. Adding to the river’s new chemical cocktail mix is sewage and the industrial waste flowing from tanneries, chemical plants, textile mills and slaughterhouses, making the modern day Ganges slightly less than magical.

Luckily, in 2019, the Ganges saw another addition to its waters; a team of 20 female scientists, all with a passion for halting our plastic tide. The ‘Sea to Source Expedition’ is part of National Geographic’s ‘Planet or Plastic’ initiative which aims to find a well-rounded solution to the plastic crisis by including a whole host of people and by tackling every stage of plastic waste’s journey. Despite plastic surrounding us every day, we still have many questions about its life story once it enters our rubbish bins. How exactly does it enter the environment within each country? Are certain types of plastic more likely to be ocean offenders than others? How quickly does plastic travel down rivers and across oceans and where exactly does it congregate? Currently, scientists use population data and insights into waste management to calculate how much plastic is flowing from rivers out into our global oceans. Yet this expedition hoped to finally collect some real data which we can put side by side with our estimates to provide a clearer idea of the problem we are tackling. Accidentally, this ambitious mission has also become a venture which showcases the work of women within STEM subjects such as science, technology, engineering and maths. The expedition leaders started by selecting the best possible scientists for the job and towards the end they realised that these academics just so happened to be all female. Consequently, this expedition now also hopes to empower and inspire other women to get involved in industries that have previously be considered male-dominated.

The team, made up of scientists from around the globe, carried out research in 10 sites across India and Bangladesh, once in spring 2019 and again in autumn 2019 to understand the different impacts fierce monsoons have on the amount of plastic being washed into our waterways. Out on the water, some of the team studied the levels of plastic pollution in the river water, riverbed sediments and in local species whilst they used drones to calculate how much plastic was littered across the riverbanks and on the surface of the water. They also monitored the amount of fishing related waste which was sitting piled at popular fish landing sites to try and understand where the pollution originated. They even tagged plastic bottles and sent them floating downstream, tracking their movements via satellite for several weeks to understand where and how quickly waste moves. At the end of the expedition, all these plastic bottles were collected from the water and the group stuck to their ocean-friendly ethos the entire trip, with every single piece of plastic they brought into India being taken back home with them, including everything from life jackets to cutlery to shampoo bottles.

Some of the expedition members remained on dry land, travelling across the bustling landscapes by train or bus. The land-based team aimed to monitor littered plastic which had not yet made it to the water and over their two expeditions they recorded and collected over 70,000 pieces of plastic. This data was logged onto the Marine Debris Tracker app to add to the growing worldwide database whilst any brand names appearing on the rubbish were noted down too to help identify the biggest commercial polluters. The team also used some more novel sampling techniques such as using social media to understand how local people felt about the plastic problem. One researcher even looked into the impact of livestock grazing on wasteland and dumpsites, a very new consideration in our plastic conundrum. Finally, the expedition also had a small social team which visited local people at each step of the journey to understand what inhabitants thought of the waste issue, how they disposed of household rubbish and whether there was any regional action on plastic taking place. These important conversations took place from the fishing community in Bihar to the quiet mountain villages in Uttarkhand. Along the way, the team tried to understand the link between poverty and plastic better, with small, single-use sachets of shampoo, salt and sauce often being the only way many households can afford to buy these everyday items. Possibly most importantly, the land-based teams spoke in schools throughout both countries with the aim of building a community of passionate, motivated citizen scientists who would continue collecting litter data long after the scientists had returned to their offices.

Throughout lockdown, the expedition team has had a lot of time to start analysing all the data they collected over both trips to the Indian subcontinent. Hopefully, soon these results will be available for all to read and for the scientists to show to government leaders and officials to help provide the groundwork for our battle against plastic. The timing of this trip seems just right as India’s prime minister Modi has pledged to clean the Ganges and end the sale of single-use plastic by 2022. The data from this voyage will help the government identify where the plastic is coming from, which brands are the biggest contributors, where littered plastic is likely to collect, how local people use and dispose of plastic and, importantly, showcase to the government just how willing the country’s inhabitants are to start revolutionising their relationship with waste. There is also great hope for change in Bangladesh too as the country prides itself on having one of Earth’s greatest river networks, yet the pollution flowing down through India is meeting with the pollution generated from maritime ventures such as shipping and creating a great swirl of junk in Bangladesh’s deltas and on shorelines. Bangladesh has long been on the plastic-free bandwagon, being the first country in the world to ban polythene bags in 2002 and so it is hoped the data from this journey will be put to use creating real change in the very near future.

Whilst the scientists from ‘Sea to Source’ are now back at home, great work is continuing with the organisation ‘Renew Ganga’ aiming to collect plastic waste, convert it into re-saleable, revenue-producing materials and motivate the community to keep rubbish firmly out of our environment. Again, coincidentally, this initiative will not only help save our river ecosystems but also empower local women to make a living out of the waste picking jobs they are often consigned to. With this new project aiming to remove 1,000,000 pounds of plastic from the Ganges in 2020, it seems a great transformation is already occurring in one of the most polluted regions of Earth. With plastic being banished from some of the poorest, most polluted and most rapidly growing regions of the world, we can have a renewed sense of hope that countries around the world are finally taking the environment seriously.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood