My Grandfather Lies in a River Full of Microplastics
My Hindu grandfather asked to be laid-to-rest in a sacred river. Maybe he would have changed his mind if he knew what else was in there.
When my paternal grandfather passed away over a decade ago, dozens of family and community members melted along the banks of Nepal’s holiest river, watching as my dad sprinkled his ashes into the blackened waters beyond.
In Hinduism, it’s believed that cremating the deceased and putting their ashes into a river frees the soul so it may reach heaven. It is the most important ritual in a Hindu’s life: finally, one gets to exit cycles of death and rebirth to achieve nirvana. “Water is an essential of life, so by departing in a river, you’re going back to where you came from,” my dad would say.
This past fall, I visited the Bagmati River for the first time where my grandfather lies, and I was shocked that this is where he went to rest. The Bagmati River is birthed by rainfall and runs right through Kathmandu, the capital city, picking up all sorts of trash and foul odors along the way. Food wrappers, takeout containers, plastic bags, and cigarette butts pool along the river’s edges like cattails. These materials build up and break down during a 364-mile-long journey before crossing the border into India – plenty of time and distance to degrade into imperceptible pieces. I wouldn’t think to call it ‘holy’ based on my five senses alone. Yet, 60% of the country’s Hindu population come to this very place to finally leave Earth.
A study released earlier this year confirms: my grandfather’s ashes float in a river of microplastics. Acrylic plastic particles coming from untreated wastewater make up the majority of microplastic pollution in the Bagmati River. Decades worth of plastic flowing into the river are currently degrading into microplastics and will continue to degrade for decades, even with an immediate halt of plastic waste production.
Despite appearances, demonizing plastic may not be the first answer to pollution in Nepal’s holiest river. Plastic plays some role in the economic transition of developing countries, and rural communities often lack access to non-plastic alternatives. In the end, the global overconsumption of plastic finds its roots in America soil. Plastic waste per capita is over 13 times higher in the United States than India, the world’s 2nd most-populated country and neighbor of Nepal. The U.S. has the largest consumer market in the world which transfers unfathomable quantities of plastic between hands every day. The difference in our waters is that we lay a larger proportion of our plastic waste elsewhere, including in poorer Asian nations.
Plastic pollution in Nepali rivers is a symptom of its ineffective waste management system, rapid urbanization, and insufficient education, as is the case in many other developing countries. Single-use plastics are cheap, convenient, and everywhere. Some toss trash right into the water, believing it to be so divine that nothing can blemish its purity. By upgrading the waste management system and providing education on the impacts of macro and microplastics, the government of Nepal can begin to restore its sacred rivers.
Some progress is already being made: there is a nationwide ban on plastics below 40 microns thick, and last year the country took on a project with the United Nations to upgrade its waste management system. Still, overhauling waste management and instituting educational resources are expensive undertakings for economically-poor countries, who experience the consequences of global plastic culture most disproportionately.
Departure
The Bagmati River snakes through a holy site in the center of town: the Pashupati Temple. It is here where most Nepali Hindus come to die.
The view is matte with smoke. Platforms line the river, and two of them are up in flames with someone’s loved one. There’s a raised viewing area where you can snack on street food and watch strangers mourn. Down below, a family of thirty dissolves all over the ghat. One of them wails with her whole body. A woman lies dead, pale face uncovered. A hand pulls the shroud back over her face, and three more lift her onto a wooden pyre.
Char and bits of cloth catch a puff of wind and settle somewhere downstream. I don’t stay long enough to see the woman turn to ash and enter the river, but by now I’ve seen enough: the blaze growing brighter, the tourists snacking, the smell of flesh burning, all the wails. I never got to meet my grandfather and wasn’t there when he was cremated here all those years ago, but I see him down there on the platform now. I watch the current carry him bit-by-bit down the Bagmati, pieces of him mingling with scraps of plastic, scraps of plastic breaking down so small that they become indistinguishable from specks of human ash. My only hope now is that he finds rest among it all.
