BIGFOOTHILL: Sungai Juru Recreation Park, Bukit Mertajam, Seberang Perai Tengah, Pulau Pinang

BIGFOOTHILL: Sungai Juru Recreation Park, Bukit Mertajam, Seberang Perai Tengah, Pulau Pinang, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng urged NGOs to support for state's No Plastic Bag ruling

Pollutions at Sungai Juru

Pollutants trapped at Sungai Juru

Pollutants floating and flowing into Sungai Juru

Is there fish at Sungai Juru now?

A man looking for fish and casting his net at Sungai Juru

Will Sungai Juru be a  Claass 2 river by 2015?

There are pollutions on our rivers due to  our neglect for the environment.  With rubbish going into our drains and choking our rivers, it is bound to be man made disasters happening such as flooding of residential, industrial and commercial areas that never happen before but it will happen due to accumulation over time.  Do we want to prevent flood before it happens?  I have seen the plastics and non-bio degradable objects flowing to Sungai Juru just yesterday at the recreation park.  I can see the children playground is well maintained and clean.  Is it because parents are afraid to bring the children there since Juru river was reported to be the most polluted river in Penang State.  Can we allow the contamination on the playground of our children by the riverside which are hazardous to our healths?  The Drainage and Irrigation Department (Jabatan Pengairan and Saliran or JPS) administration have targeted to covert Sungai Juru and Sungai Pinang from Class 5 to Class 2 rivers where it is clean enough for people to swim by 2015.

I saw someone was casting the net on the river Sungai Juru near the recreation park yesterday morning.  According to the JPS classification, this is a class 3 status.  The target is not impossible to achieve if only all consumers and manufacturers of packaging materials resort to the green and environmental friendly alternative of using bio-degradable materials and changing the habits of using plastic bags and foams for holding the shopping items and food stuff.  Bring your own green bags, trolleys and baskets to do sundry and stainless steel containers and tiffins for foods will help save the environment from the habit of use and discard to bring, clean and reuse.

Water bills may increase but negligible.  The thought of inconvenience of bringing your own tiffins or containers to office if office workers have been used to getting the foods in plastic bags from the nearby stalls could be the main habit that is difficult to adapt to initially.  I can remember those good old days in the 1960s and 1970s where our mothers used to prepare breakfast and lunchboxes when we go to schools or work.  We used the metal enameled plates at the school canteens for our favorite noodle soups, and fried noodles while the banana leaves for some of the Malaysian foods and desserts like curry steamed rice with anchovy and hard-boiled egg garnished with cucumber slices known as "Nasi lemak" and steamed glutinous rice with grated coconut mixed with brown sugar or known as "pulut inti" and  glutinous rice baked with pounced dried shrimps and chillies together with grated coconut or better known as "pulut udang" Rice in Malay is "Nasi" while glutinous rice in Malay is called "pulut"

We went visiting our relatives and friends at the hospital with home cooked foods on stainless steel containers, pots and tiffins.  We brought the bottles ourselves for the pharmacists at the government clinics and hospitals to contain the liquid medicines.  Today we pay and pay more bills and hospital charges for health-care. We have better medical facilities today  for treatment of illnesses and long term care but consumers are poorer as everything comes in packages and packaging.   The supply you plastic mug with toiletries nowadays if you are admitted to hospital on consultation.  Those days, we get admitted too but we or our relatives or friend will bring our own vacuum flask for warm water and own porcelain plate, bowl and cups with spoon and fork for our meals and medication.

Looking back those days meant life were much simpler with not much expectation of service from the hospital staff and consultants other than necessary help and assistance for treatments and a little comfort  for visitation by loved ones out of visiting hours who had to travel by bus or taxi or cycled from home to hospitals, and with only the objective and expectation of getting healed and out of the hospital in speed time which are in contrast to today's consumers demand for King service because we paid for it and we deserved it.  As a consumer, we are at the receiving end as the cost of medical bills increases and the cost of annual hospitalization and surgical insurance kept increasing.

Life will be much healthier and medical bills will be less expensive if we kick our unhealthy and unfriendly desire for plastics in our daily consumption and activities  which could be the sources for pollutions and toxic to our body, plastic surgeries to augment our unnatural beauty or even plastic money from the credit cards which are making us debtors.


In the nutshell, we are all in the chains of the food cycle which can be affected by the pollutants which we are reluctant to do away with because of the conveniences we enjoyed in the short-term.  Must we only be persuaded or forcibly asked to change our habits and cut on our profits because not by the authorities but by our own convictions when someone dear or loved ones are infected by diseases such as cancer and other dread diseases due to exposure to these pollutants which we happen to manufacture or make-it-happen as we use them daily for easy to carry or package our foods? Facts and statistics on cancer and other dread diseases causing pollutants are scientifically proven but we chose our own destiny to ignore it.