“We’ll have to shut shop and leave, what else?” says Mohsin bhai irritably, responding to a question on what he would do if the plastic ban is upheld by the courts, and is enforced stringently.

Mohsin bhai has been running a plastic cutlery shop in Sutar Chawl, Crawford Market, for over two decades now, selling disposable cups, plates, spoons and a variety of other ‘one-time use’ items. All of them have now been banned by the Maharashtra government.

Nimeet Punamiya, owner of Narendra Plastics and General Secretary of the Plastic Bag Manufacturers Association of India, estimates the total loss to the industry will be a whopping ₹15,000 crore.

“What are we supposed to do? We have been doing this for 2-3 generations; we know nothing else,” he says. “We’ll simply have to incur losses and shut shop. The government isn’t even allowing recyclable plastic, so what do you propose we do?”

According to data from the Central Pollution Control Board for 2012-13, Maharashtra generates the most plastic waste per recycling unit. The State doesn’t have the infrastructure to treat its large pile of plastic waste.

Sudhakar Yedla, Professor of Environmental Policy at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, says waste management in India is nascent and the recycling industry is inefficient. “Our major problem is plastic bags clogging the already insufficient sewage pipes in cities, leading to more flooding in the monsoon.”

He is sceptical of the ban’s efficacy in Maharashtra, given that other States have found little success in implementing similar measures. He laments that plastic bags are neither reused nor recycled, and argues for regulating their supply.

The government has also banned, apart from a whole list of items, plastic bags above 50 microns, which are recyclable.

Yedla calls for a multi-pronged approach to ensure the ban is effective. First, the government should introduce alternatives. “Second, a more pragmatic approach would be to let the industry change their process lines to make thicker bags that are less damaging to the environment and to have consumers pay for these thicker bags,” he says.

“And most important, plastic bag manufacturers should be made partners in a recycling initiative. A simple ban will succumb to the pushes and pulls of various players and fade over time,” said Yedla.

On June 6, the Maharashtra government filed an affidavit in the Bombay High Court stating that it had formed a special task force consisting of manufacturers’ associations and other experts to look into plastic waste management and implementation of the ban. The ban is to be implemented from June 23.

Meanwhile, PS Gobale, who is one of the names on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s 107-member ‘Plastic ban Squad’, says the government has not issued any guidelines yet. “But we know that we have to collect fines from people caught using banned plastic.”

(The writer is an intern)

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