NOVEMBER 15:"Plastic bags don't litter, people litter." With this motto, the Plastindia Foundation tried to divert public and media criticism on plastic carry bags at a press conference held in the city last Friday.Attacking paper and cloth bags, plastic manufacturers made some absolutely goofy comparisons to the ban. ``Banning bags is not the solution, do we ban marriages to control population?'' asked Rajiv Tolat, president of the All India Plastic Manufacturers' Association (AIPMA).But the hour-long presentation by various Plastindia Foundation members to explain the utility of plastics completely missed a basic fact.Recent concern has been directed not at the industry or even at the utility of plastic per se, which is hard to deny, but at the thin gauge rerecycled plastic bags which are so hard to dispose.What the government has been telling the plastic industry is to simply substitute thin bags with thicker plastic bags which can be reused several times and which are easier forragpickers to collect and recycle. It presently takes nearly 1,000 thin plastic bags to collect a kg of plastic worth a few rupees. No ragpicker is willing to undergo this back-breaking exercise and so the bags stay wherever they are thrown.The industry too has agreed to increase the minimum thickness of virgin carry bags to 20 microns as against the 5 ultra-thin microns at present. The thickness of carry bags will also be increased to a minimum of 25 microns to provide adequate economic incentives to ragpickers to pick up waste bags and channel them into the recycling chain.But instead of elaborating on these measures, the manufacturers went on the offensive, targeting internationally suggested environment-friendly alternatives like paper, cloth and jute bags.``If plastic bags lie around for a few days or months, it's not a problem, paper also lies around for years,'' said Sujit Banerji, vice-president, (Polyolefins) Reliance Industries.He quoted landfill studies in the US which said paper didn'tdegrade fast enough to extend the life of modern landfills. Cotton too was not eco-friendly since it's one of the most chemically intensive crops which contaminates soil and ground water. Processing cotton involved largescale use of synthetic dyes and bleaching agents. Jute processing too released chemicals into the environment.Incidents of cows dying after consuming horrific amounts of plastic bags, too, were waved away. ``It could have been a stray incident,'' Banerji said, adding it was physically impossible for a cow to have swallowed the 55,000 plastic bags that it would take to make up 55 kgs of plastic bags.But in a spell of soul searching, plastic manufacturers agreed on the need to create public awareness and effectively dispose plastic garbage. Vijay Merchant, chairman of the Enviroplast committee said the Indian Centre for Plastics in Environment would develop new technologies for reprocessing plastic waste in India. It would improve waste management techniques, develop and introduce testingstandards for plastic waste and products and also conduct educational and awareness programmes.
