Srinagar, April 20 -- There was a time when Kashmir's waste returned to the soil. Today, it returns to us - through water, food, and air. From the shores of Dal Lake to the smallest village drains, plastic has become the valley's most visible - and least acknowledged - ecological threat.

We like to believe that the problem is about "littering." It isn't. It is about design failure, policy evasion, and collective convenience. Plastic in Kashmir does not merely lie around; it travels. A chips packet dropped in a market finds its way into a drain, from there into a stream, and eventually into a lake. What we see as scattered waste is, in reality, a connected system of contamination.

The tragedy is that Kashmir's geography amplifies this da...