Go the whole hog, ban polythene bags: Mayor

No haggling over thickness now. Mumbai is preparing to pack off polythene bags, lock, stock and barrel. Into a frustrating battle against the polythene bag menace for long, environmentalists now have an endorsement for their cause from the mayor’s office. If everything follows the script and good intention manifests in action, the city may well be carrying the good old cotton bags soon.

Mayor Shraddha Jadhav has asked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to table a proposal to ban all forms of plastic bags. The proposal will soon be tabled before the group of political leaders in the BMC. Jadhav has blamed the consistent use of plastic bags for environmental degradation and choking of drains.

After the July 26, 2005, deluge, the government had banned polythene bags of below-50-micron thickness. It followed its earlier ban on below- 20-micron bags. However, these bans based on thickness of bags have served only as half-measures, with no real respite to the city’s drainage system long bedevilled by the non-degradable plastic bags.

“The partial ban has failed to curb the use of polybags effectively. These continue to choke drainage and sewer lines regularly,” Jadhav said. The mayor’s office has been promoting the use of paper and cloth bags as an environment-friendly alternative.
While the civic body is still scrutinising the feasibility of the proposal, it has already bagged the support of both ruling and opposition benches. “We welcome the initiative. The use of cloth and paper bags should be enforced,” opposition leader in the civic body Rajhans Singh (Congress) said.

Environmentalists, while welcoming the proposal, are sceptical about its implementation.

“The city has not been able to enforce even the partial ban effectively,” Girish Raut, renowned environmentalist, said.

The apprehension is not totally unfair. Figures provided by the municipal corporation reveal that the wide use of thin plastic continues despite the ban. As much as 19,461 kilo tonne of thin plastic has been seized by the BMC in the past year and a half. It has collected Rs98 lakh in fines.

The Pune municipal corporation has set the precedent for BMC to follow. It has begun implementing a total ban on polythene bags, after a resolution was passed in its general body on December 24. The legislation for the total ban was first approved in Himachal Pradesh in June this year; it is now being replicated elsewhere.

Dr Mahendra Parmar, president, All India Plastic Manufacturers Association, however, felt that the industry was being targeted unfairly. Claiming that plastic waste accounted for only 4% of the city’s daily waste generation, Parmar said that the environmental degradation and choking of drains was largely due to an inefficient waste disposal system.