Plastic ban: No big deal?

While vegetable vendors and supermarkets in the city have been the most effected of the lot due to the ban of plastic bags below 40 microns of thickness, various malls and swank stores seem unaffected  by the same.And the street vendors have their respective ways of dealing with it. On one hand, some of the vendors have completely disowned plastic bags of any thickness and demand their customers to get their own bags if they want to purchase fruits and vegetables. While on the other hand, certain vendors are found secretly selling groceries in plastic bags with thickness below 40 microns. “We do face a loss because plastic bags above 40 microns are available for double the price. Now I buy 50 plastic bags for the price that I would spend for 100 plastic bags. But this ban is good. It is just like how things were around 12 years ago. Also, because of the ban, almost 75 per cent of my customers carry their own bags,” says D Ravi, a vegetable vendor in the city, who was found secretly selling vegetables in plastic bags with less than 40 microns thickness. While Ravi doesn’t seem to mind the ban because he balances out --- because of his customers with individual bags, or the secret use of plastic bags less than 40 microns of thickness, some other vendors are unhappy with this ban. Farzana Begum, another vegetable vendor in the city moans, “This ban is causing me a great loss! Now one plastic bag (above 40 microns) is equal to former four bags of less than 40 microns.” She further complains that most her customers don’t carry their personal bags. “Most of my customers say that they are not directly coming from home and I have to pack vegetables in my plastic bags, because of which I end up spending a lot of money that leads to losses.” Another vegetable vendor, Raghu, adds, “I have strictly asked all my customers to carry their bags when they come to purchase. And, if they don’t have a bag with them, I ask them to select their groceries to be kept aside, so that they can fetch their bag and take them home.” While this is the tale of some of the street vendors in the city, supermarkets in the city have come to terms with this ban without any problems. “It is very good that this ban has taken place. The customers are also happy because earlier with the previous coloured plastic bags, there was a weird smell that would come,” says S Kiran Kumar, purchase manager at one of the Ratnadeep supermarkets in the city.Daniel George, store manager of Max, says, “The bags we use are of 82.7 micron thickness, which meets the limit. So plastic ban has not had any effect in our store.” He further adds, “I strongly think that we all should switch to using cloth and paper bags completely.”