Planet or Plastic? Asked a stunning, disturbing, provocative photo-illustration created by Mexican artist Jorge Gamboa on the cover of the recent National Geographic magazine. It featured a plastic bag partially submerged in the ocean. The subliminal or rather in your face message being, the world's plastic pollution is "just the tip of the iceberg." The irony though was that the magazine arrived on newsstands and to subscribers wrapped in two layers of plastic, perhaps to underscore that rhetoric and good intentions notwithstanding, we are still far from real, demonstrable change in the way we use plastic.

This is Seetal and today on the MoneyControl podcast, we will address the state-wide ban by Maharashtra government on plastic products that has recently come into effect. But first let us talk about the bigger picture. 

The question getting more urgent by the minute globally is if we can rethink collectively, our consumption of single-use plastics? Especially, when we know that plastic we throw away can last for up to 1,000 years in our environment. Plastic, we are beginning to learn also impacts our water supply and that cannot be good news considering the fact that plastics may contain many toxic chemicals.