Why it Requires More Than Simple Bans to Stop Plastic Menace

It started with billiard balls 150 years back, and has an indirect connection to India. But don’t expect anyone here to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the invention of plastic.

On Gudi Padva this year the government of Maharashtra announced a sweeping set of measures to ban plastic bags, straws and cutlery.

It includes fines starting from Rs5,000 and a cess on manufacturers to encourage recycling plastic (if recycling is done satisfactorily the amount will be refunded, is done satisfactorily the amount will be refunded, otherwise it goes towards funding recycling facilities).

Similar bans on plastic have been announced across India, from as far back as 1997 when a magistrate in Kottayam in Kerala banned transparent plastic bags. In June this year India will be the global host for World Environment Day and has announced ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ as the special theme.

The importance of these anti-plastic policies, and their sadly limited success, is easy to see. We are drowning in discarded plastic. It clogs our rivers and is regurgitated on our beaches by the sea at every tide.

The sanctity of historical and religious sites is profaned by plastic waste. Studies show it in the water we drink, through broken down granules too tiny to see, but still unchangeably plastic.