Delhi to outlaw plastic bags
Customers and shopkeepers in India's capital face jail sentence or stiff fine for using polythene bags
Carry a plastic bag in Delhi and you could be imprisoned for five years. Officials in India's capital have decided that the only way to stem the rising tide of polythene is to outlaw the plastic shopping bag.
According to the official note, the "use, storage and sale" of plastic bags of any kind or thickness will be banned. The new guideline means that customers, shopkeepers, hoteliers and hospital staff face a 100,000 rupee fine (£1,370) and a possible jail sentence for using non-biodegradable bags.
Delhi has been quietly filling up with plastic bags in recent years as the economy boomed and western-style shopping malls sprang up in the city. There are no reliable figures for bag use but environmentalists say more than 10m a day are used in the capital every day. Not only are the streets littered with them, but polythene takes hundreds of years to decompose and creates demand for oil, which is used to make plastics.
At first the ban will be lightly implemented, giving people time to switch to jute, cotton, recycled-paper and compostable bags.
Newspapers in India quoted city officials as saying that the authorities did not "want people to be harassed and no prosecution will take place immediately; [once they] understand that by using plastic bags they will be in contempt of court, they will start using other material". The first targets in Delhi will be the industrial units that manufacture the plastic bags in the capital, which officials say will be closed down.
Civil servants said that punitive measures were needed after a law prohibiting all but the thinnest plastic bags – no thicker than 0.04mm – was ignored.
Although the government had originally concluded that plastic bags were too cheap and convenient to be disposed of, the authorities appear to have been swayed by environmentalists who pointed out that used bags were clogging drains and so providing breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever.
Living/traveling through smoggy emerging economies does make me both thankful for a strong environmental lobby in the US, and realize just how much of America's industrial pollution has simply been pushed overseas.
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6 comments:
I had read previously (maybe it was in one of your posted links that i didnt look at) that India was making it such that these bags had to be a certain thickness. Because (in the true indian fashion) the bags were being made thinner to save money, and cows would end up eating them (and dying because of it) since they were not that heavy.
This article that i read also talked about the rag pickers, a group of extremely impoverished children that recycle the bags to earn a living for themselves and at times there families as well. The thicker bags would help rag pickers because they could get a better price ber bag.
I am all for helping the environment (as it is our christian prerogative to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us, i.e. the earth), but I dont think banning plastic bags is the answer. Charge a ruppee or 50 paisa for each bag (which will reduce the number being used), or hell even start enforcing litter laws (novel idea). No matter what there will be a group (rag pickers) that are negatively affected by this move. Like I said i dont know what the correct answer is, but it sucks when all answers have a negative effect.
Also, i dont want bottled water to get banned in India, because then i wont be able to go there without getting the trots...selfish, maybe...
I meant bottled water in places with healthy tap like SF. We'd be lost without it here.
And I'm not sure I agree about the bags. Trash clogs sewers, creates filth, etc. that isn't healthy for anyone.. especially the poor. And creating trash just to keep a certain segment of society employed hardly sounds like a sustainable solution. And it's much much easier to stop something like this at the source than to enforce littering laws that will never be followed.
i dont disagree with you Phil, I am just saying that it will effect these people negatively. Also, I think that i was mostly saying that no other laws like that are paid attention to in India so why would this one be...1 lakh rupees is a lot to pay as a penalty, but a 100 rupee bribe to the officer could probably get it taken away...
Also, like I said, I dont have answers, just questions about other answers...
On the bottled water issue I heard an interesting argument (once again might not be a good overall argument but one none the less. Also I am very anti-bottled water, I think it is a waste of money and resources, so take this argument with a grain of salt). If the places that dont need bottled water (lets call them "the west") were to entirely ban bottled water then obviously the ammount/production capacity of bottled water in the world would decrease significantly. Which seems great, until something like the tsunami in Thailand or the cyclone in Burma happen. When these things happen then the water supplies are tainted (even worse than normal) to the point were the locals cant drink it without getting sick/dieing. In these cases relief bottled water is shipped from the west to help with the recovery process. With a western ban on bottled water then this would not be possible and people would die due to not getting clean water.
Once again I am not sure that I even agree with that argument, since i think that bottled water in the west is a trendy waste that should be minimised/squashed, to not ban bottled water, and it isnt even my argument i guess. It would be interesting to hear what you think of that...
Peace
Also, getting rid of the plastic bags would be good for another reason. The way that street trash is handled in lots of places in India (not sure about delhi) is that it is swept together and burnt. This is terrible for health and the environment when a majority of the trash being burnt is plastic (which it is), so that is another argument for banning it...
leave your logic at the door, timms.
glad yall made it back safe.
but yeah — unintended consequences. im not for 'em. and man.. history is littered with them.
good thoughts.
death to plastic.
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