United Nations reported that 164,332 tons of plastic are dumped into the Indus basin which is second highest of any ocean globally. Microplastic, which can’t be seen with the naked eye, end up polluting the Indus river basin. Humans consume 72,000 microplastic from indoor and outdoor air annually, which poses serious health risks including cancer, fatigue, and obesity.
https://youtu.be/No-KuBDFRQc
A news report published by the Technical University Munich shared that every year humans produce around 400 million tons of plastic worldwide. A significant proportion of this plastic ends up in the environment as litter, and most types of plastic take several hundred years to completely degrade.
According to the National Ocean Service website, "Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of micro plastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpaste. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean and Great Lakes, posing a potential threat to aquatic life."
[https://dev.publishrr.com/nayadaur.tv/2019/04/plastic-is-eating-up-our-ecosystem-our-environment-even-our-children/]
A group of scientists has found that up to 95 percent of plastic polluting the world’s oceans comes from just 10 rivers, eight of which are in Asia including Pakistan’s Indus River.
The Indus River, one of the longest waterways in Asia has been contaminated because of litter, untreated agrarian, mechanical and city squander.
Over the past couple of months, the impacts upon natural life from eating or getting trapped in plastic garbage have been more broadly accounted for and more frequently than any time in recent memory, prompting open clamour and challenges.
If you will look to the previous reports in Pakistan about the actions/notifications on ban of plastic bags and many other such claims you will realise how the government and environmental protection agencies have been working in this regard.
People who are settled on the river banks usually dump all their waste in the water, they don't even know about the existence of infinite human beings who drink this water without filtering it. Don't know how such alarming situations can wave policymakers and parliamentarians who are the key stakeholders.
However, before putting all the blame on them, we need to know about our responsibilities and what we need to do to save our wonderful land and the lives of indigenous species that inhabit it.
In the end, I would say that microplastic pollution has badly affected marine life, many spices of river and seas have disappeared from the rivers due to dumping, burning, and pouring of waste. And the problem of microplastic is not "minor" at all, it needs proper action and well-planned strategies to save the endangered surveillance of the plants, animals, and other organisms that live in the marine life.