Mumbai learns to live without plastic

Cloth shopping bags, edged out by the jhabla bags in the mid-80s, made a slow comeback in the city. Faced with the prospect of carrying groceries in their bare hands, customers made a beeline for cloth bag sellers. “Business has increased by over 10 per cent in the last three days,” says Javed Khan, a gleeful cloth bag vendor outside the crowded Dadar station road. Thanking the BMC for the ban, he hands out colourful cloth bags for Rs 15.

“I’m totally against plastic bags but I always forget to take a bag from home,” says Shanta Pathi, a school-teacher from Vile Parle, who bought two such cloth bags in the last four days.

Ashish Baghel recalls a vegetable vendor in Bandra agreeing to supply a contraband thin plastic bag only if he hid it in a cloth bag!

The BMC’s threat of hefty spot fines seemed to have worked and customers were too mindful of the ban to protest. The ones who did were told of the consequences. “If I go to jail or pay a fine, I’ll complain about you so you get the same punishment,” one vendor told an insistent customer.

Housewives at Dahisar, insisted that the vegetable vendors not hand out plastic bags. “We had taken cloth bags from home. When the plastic ones are harmful why don’t these people stop giving them? That was our point, and so me and my friend protested,” declares Veena Sawant, an housewife.

Most vendors had got rid of their thin plastic bags a few days earlier. The ones who hadn’t, treated the bag like contraband. A hawker who refused to reveal his identity, whispered that he had stored all his remaining bags at home. “I don’t want to pay up Rs 2000 to argue about bags worth Rs 500.”

While it was the dread of coughing up the fine that worked for most hawkers, others didn’t have to try too hard. “Most of the customers came with their own bags today, the BMC’s awareness campaign seemed to have worked,” grinned Sunil Mawle, a vendor in Lalbaug.

At the vegetable market in Vile Parle, a merchant organisation distributed cloth bags with kick plastic bag logos amongst the customers. Only last week it confiscated over 1.5 lakh plastic bags. The use of thin plastic bags, however, continued in the limits of the Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC). The KDMC is yet to decide on banning the thin bags. Though the Thane Municipal Corporation too is yet to officially ban the carry bags, some shopkeepers in Thane city voluntarily stopped using these bags.