For the first phase of the major campaign against polythene use, the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) on Tuesday conducted a meeting with the stakeholders and the officials’ in-charge. In the meeting the stakeholders were provided with an open forum for them to share their grievances and suggestions. Most of the members of merchant association were not satisfied with the answers they were provided with and said that MCD itself is not clear about the concept of polythene management.
Mayor Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ said, “The meeting for the first phase has been completed. We will be conducting meeting in two more phases with different stakeholders in the coming days. After that we are planning to conduct a drive in order to take support from the public by asking them to donate polythene to us. This will give them a chance to get rid of all the polythene without getting penalised for keeping them. This will continue for about a month.
After October 2, we will start enforcing the guidelines of Uttarakhand High court strictly. The defaulters will be heavily penalised.” During the meeting member of Plastic and Paper Bag Association, Anil Matta said, “We completely agree that polythene and plastic littered around are indeed affecting our environment negatively; however MCD itself is not clear about the concept of plastic management. We suggest that single use polythene be banned but the motive should be to get rid of use and throw mentality. If the polythene gets reused and recycled then it will not be a problem. In a project that was conducted in the year 2007-08 by Presidential award winner Vipin Gupta, we collected garbage with the help of rag-pickers.
During that project when we segregated the garbage only five per cent of the total garbage consisted of polythene carry bags, 95 percent of the plastic waste was the packaging of chips, milk and other items. Polythene is cheap, easier to carry and unless there is a proper alternative to it the use of polythene cannot be completely banned.” Aashish from Keval Vihar said, “A lot of people are suggesting that polythene above the thickness of 51 micron should be allowed, however the point is that a cattle does not discriminate polythene before eating it on the basis of microns. Strict enforcement is necessary.” VP Kukreti from Keval Vihar Residential Society said that, “Earlier medicines were packaged in glass bottles, but the plastic bottles have taken their place.
No packaging tells us the chemical reaction these plastic bottles cause when they come in contact with the medicines or any other food item they come in contact with.” Member of non-governmental organisation Waste Warriors, Naveen Kumar Sardana said, “United Nations Development Programme and Coca-Cola with the help of MCD is building a plastic recovery centre at Harrawala.
Also at nearly 20 schools we with the help of MCD have distributed ‘plastic gullak’ a sort of piggy bank so that students can collect plastic and deposit the same there.” Municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said, “Our motive is to make the people aware and encourage them in such a way that they stop using polythene by their own will.” It is pertinent to mention here that during the meeting a number of members of merchant association said that whatever the plan there should not be scope for the harassment of merchants.
