Ban On Plastics Bags Pune Municipal Corporation has decided to bring in ban on all the plastics bags to check the menace of floating thin bags. Till now plastics bags below 50 microns thickness have been banned in Maharashtra after the Mumbai floods for which plastics bags were made scapegoats. Is banning plastics bags the solution? Can the ban be effective in achieving the objective? In spite of the ban on bags below 50 microns, tonnes of bags are finding way into market without perhaps any effect of the ban. They will continue to be produced as long as the economics of packaging and cost of production justifies the same. Ban is not the answer! We as a nation are not good at implementation of any laws or bans. In fact our political leaders take pride in breaking the laws and showing they are above the same. Supreme Court Directive on Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) Rules 2000 made it mandatory on all Municipal Corporations to collect door to door segregated waste. There were schedules for formulation of operating systems for different categories and implementation by 2003. We do not have political will to implement this directive of Supreme Court. In Pune City, even a small decision like making a street one way can not be implemented. Number of one way streets in the city, have two way traffic and nobody can do anything! So how will they enforce a ban on manufacturing of plastic bags? There are hardly any municipal corporations which have complied with the directive of the highest authority of the land. So if government bodies do not feel the need to follow the law of the land, why ban production activity? At least they are generating economic activity, providing jobs, generating resources and not just consuming public resources as do the municipal corporations. This is not to cover the industry but to bring home the point that all the sections of society have to look at their role and do justice to solve the universal problem spread across the world. A multipronged strategy is necessary to tackle this problem. Cost effectiveness of plastics bags: Ban on plastics bag does not help. It leads to more problems than it solves any. We have to understand that the market forces for any product decide the birth or death of a product. It is the economics which is the deciding factor in favour of plastics bags. The profitability of large organized retailers depends on packaging costs. If paper bags have to replace plastics bags the associated costs are much more. The energy consumed in making of paper bags is three times that used by plastics bags and large number of trees has to be felled to make paper. Cost of forestation is much higher than cost of recycling of bags. People are not aware that plastics bags are 100% recyclable. Cost of transporting huge piles of paper bags will be much more than that of plastics bags. Storage space required for paper bags for equal carrying capacities will be extremely high and unmanageable. Consumers only have to pay price for such higher costs.
Role of Consumers and Members of Society: We as a community seem to be happy throwing anything 20 feet away from our dwelling place, never mind what happens after that. If people do not change their ways, the corporation has to bring systems taking cognizance of these facts of life and our national character. Education and involvement of public is essential for managing waste. It was heartening to see a city corporation board on the road in Aundh, Pune, reading something like "When we go abroad, we don’t litter. Why do it here? "Well done to "educate" the educated public traveling overseas. One board is not enough. A sustained campaign is essential to inculcate sense of responsibility at least among the educated lot first. Education must start at primary schools levels. Don’t we keep newspapers till month end to sell them off as "raddi" even if it fetches just Rs.20 a month? Why should we litter surroundings with plastics bags? If the bags are not further reusable, we can pile them up and then dispose off as a bunch/bundle so that segregation becomes easy for rag pickers. Inability to segregate very thin plastics bags out of tonnes of waste is the main issue. What about the efforts to create an efficient garbage collection and disposal system? For example, can the garbage be collected and incinerated in smaller clusters instead of transporting long distance out of the city and making a mess even in villages like Urali Devachi and Fursungi in Pune. Urali and villages have shown through their protests that even villages cannot be taken for granted for garbage dumping. The corporation has bought time of seven months to resolve the problem. It is time to address the issue in totality and not just tinkering with law book by bringing a ban to divert the public attention from the real issues. Role of corporate bodies: Large retailers like malls who are organized visavis small grocery shops, have to pitch in with their abilities to think big and treat the issue as an extension of their business environment. WalMart is leader in recycling of plastics bags. They manage to collect plastics bags and wrappers for recycling. They are using plastics bags only because they are still most cost effective solution. Bharati Group has tied up with Wal Mart for retail operations. It will be interesting to see if Bharati can bring in their model for management of plastics bags to India. Large retailers and malls can take the lead with drop boxes at entry so that people can drop unwanted plastics bags for recycling. Can large retail business groups like Future Group, Bharati, Aditya Birla Group, Reliance, RPG, Tata and others take collective initiative as a part of corporate social responsibility to evolve a sustainable model on the lines of WalMart? After all, their profitability is ensured by cost effective plastics bags.
Role of City Corporations: Role of government agencies like pollution control boards and city corporations has to be proactive and not reactive when drainages choke up in mansoon. Just seminars and some advertisments on "World Environment Day observed on June5" every year is not enough. Concrete actions are necessary to make this difference at ground levels. The city corporations have to realize that people are forced to reuse thin plastics bags for disposal of household waste just because there is no organized system of collection and segregation of waste. If corporation insists on certain waste collection system then only they can expect cooperation from inhabitants. Our corporators are happy with sight of overflowing huge dustbins, stinking and spreading a message of cleanliness (!) surrounded by stray dogs and cows! Would you agree that it is due to plastics bags (which may be just 23% of the mass)? We owe it to our apathy and systemic failure. Instead of taking shelter under the banning exercise and finding a scapegoat in the plastics bags, the municipal corporations would do well to reorganize themselves to manage the process of collection and disposal of waste taking lessons from developed world. In any developed society, waste is a byproduct of prosperity. Consumers have to be ready to pay for garbage disposal bags prevalent in developed countries. Don’t we pay higher maintenance charges for flats in large complexes? If our cities are growing then we have to gear up to meet the challenges of handling prosperity. I am sure if required, there would be funds available under JNNURM for making a metro, garbage free to world class standard. The bags have to be subsidized and nominal fees may be charged as a part of corporation tax for the houses/apartments. When we have Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana, why not have a Mukhya Mantri Safai Yojana in every state? Maharashtra State can identify top ten cities of the state which can be developed as models for waste management in 5 year’s time. There are a handful of city corporations which have taken initiative in managing plastics waste efficiently and have received recognition for their efforts. Pune Municipal Corporation has to just look around for suitable model to follow whether it is in India or outside and take the lead and adapt same to suit local needs. Pune is sister city of Bremen or San Jose. Why not look at their models and have a tie up for transfer of know how. Our city planners of at least metros and large cities must get together to evolve common approach to this serious problem of waste management and not just plastics bags. Today ewaste has become major issue for disposal. Where does one throw a mobile phone, a cordless phone or a computer monitor or keyboard? They are all having plastics which can be recycled. Can there be a system for collection of such valuable waste? In Singapore one finds very large containers in which one has to throw glass items separately. If we have to make a Shanghai of Mumbai or any other city, we need first to make it clean enough to be deserved to be called a city and not an "out grown village".
Internet searches show that San Francisco City banned the plastics bags and discovered that paper bags produce double the green house gas emissions and create five times waste compared to plastics bags. They also discovered that litter did not decrease defeating the very purpose of banning plastics. Even if one succeeds in replacing plastics bags with say paper bags at enormous cost disadvantage, the city corporation would find, like San Francisco, that the waste volumes have gone up substantially and littering has not decreased defeating the purpose of ban. Ban is not the answer! After all littering is in our DNA! We have to find solutions for this habit. Any takers for educating the public? Vijay M.Deshpande Corporate Advisor, Strategic Management Initiative, Pune June 5, 2009 Visit my other blogs on http://deshpandevm.wordpress.com or http://www.strami.com