Plastic bottles greeted me everywhere I went last week. In the wedding halls of Lahore and Islamabad, the hotel rooms in twin cities, the coffee shops and the restaurants, the living rooms of family and friends. Asking for water now means asking for a plastic water bottle.

The final journey of the empty plastic bottles is also not hard to guess. On one morning around 6am, impacted by a stubborn jet lag, I decided to walk to the only coffee shop that was open near our guest house in Lahore. This was in a rather well to do neighbourhood of the city - one that has ample security personnel that stop you when enter from the main road and stare inside the car and then nod so you can move along. The road I was walking on that morning was largely empty barring a few motorcycles of people going to

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