A dramatic illustration of the plastic pandemic 

Poor segregation of waste in Chennai and civic sense among people is depicted through this image of canine wearing a plastic cover around its neck.

Not too many footsteps into Anderson Road (from Greams Road), seven garbage bins would usually be neatly marshalled into a line. When filled to the brim, some of them might “offload” a trickle of contents. Community dogs usually nose their way to the windfall, nuzzling and tearing the discards for food leftovers.

Sometimes, a pack might be at it, foraging in the scattered garbage, looking askance at one another and following a pecking order. Odds are often high the pack would include a community dog with a rather attention-grabbing “collar”.

This fawn and white-streaked canine wears a plastic cover around its neck, a likely explanation being that a torn, open-ended plastic cover, slipped on to the canine’s neck as it was scarfing down food from that cover.

A regular in that patch volunteers this information: this dog has been “wearing” this plastic cover for many days now and there is no idea if the cover got slipped on accidentally or someone put it on its neck. “As it is not a domesticated dog, we are scared of approaching it and relieving it of this cover.”

To all appearances, the cover is not causing the dog any distress and it might fall off on its own or someone could help the dog off this unnecessary add-on. But there is cause for distress. A dog wearing a plastic cover on its neck seems to painfully illustrate ubiquity of plastic covers.