Every year, around 500 billion (500,000,000,000) plastic bags are used worldwide. So many that over one million bags are being used every minute and they're damaging our environment. India's plastics consumption is one of the highest in the world. Yet, precious little has been done to recycle, re-use and dispose of plastic waste. Plastic bags are difficult and costly to recycle and most end up on landfill sites where they take around 300 years to photo degrade. They break down into tiny toxic particles that contaminate the soil and waterways and enter the food chain when  animals accidentally ingest them. But the problems surrounding waste plastic bags starts long before they photo degrade.

Our planet is becoming increasingly contaminated by our unnecessary use of plastic carry bags. Big black bin liners, plastic carrier bags carrying advertising logos, clear sandwich bags, vegetable bags and a variety of other forms used to carry our daily food items and other items are all polluting our environment. Just take a look around you. Plastic bags can be seen hanging from the branches of trees, flying in the air on windy days, settled amongst bushes and floating on rivers. They clog up gutters and drains causing water and sewage to overflow and become the breeding grounds of germs and bacteria that cause diseases.

Animals and sea creatures are hurt and killed every day by discarded plastic bags - a dead turtle with a plastic bag hanging from its mouth isn't a pleasant sight but mistaking plastic bags for food is commonplace amongst marine animals. Plastic clogs their intestines and leads to slow starvation. Others become entangled in plastic bags and drown.   Because plastic bags take hundreds of years to break down, every year our seas become 'home' to more and more bags that find their way there through our sewers and waterways. Given India's poor garbage collection facilities, tons of plastic bags litter the roads, preventing rainwater from seeping into the ground. Hundreds of cows die in New Delhi alone every year when they choke on plastic bags while trying to eat vegetable waste stuffed in the garbage.

Every bag that's washed down a drain during rainfall ends up in the sea every bag that's flushed down a toilet (many mall bags are), ends up in the sea - every bag that’s blown into a river will most likely end up in the sea. Besides choking drains, plastics are highly toxics. When burned they release cancer-causing gases. Lying in the garbage, polythene bags also find their way in gut of cattle, asphyxiating the animals. The cheap bags contain chemicals such as cadmium- or lead- based chemicals that are harmful to health. They leach into vegetables, meat and food.      An estimated 15 lakh computers and 30 lakh mobile phones are disposed of every year in India.  “Computers, mobiles and other electronic items generate hazardous e-waste like lead, brominated flame retardants and chromium which can cause cancer,” There is another problem: India has more to deal with than just the waste generated at home. The Environment  Protection Authority of Britain recently said 23,000  tonnes of e-waste was dumped in India, China and Pakistan.   Several countries have already banned their use and more will doubtless follow. Several Indian states such as Maharastra, Dehli, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himanchal Pradesh, Goa , West Bengal etc. banned their use. Mumbai's storm water drainage choking with accumulated plastics waste, making the floods unmanageable, is an old story. The Environment Ministry has banned manufacture and use of plastics carry bags less than 8 inches X 12 inches in  size 20 micron in width. The ministry has also asked State Governments to register all plastics manufacturing unit, so that these can be regulated. However, the implementation of the order has been tardy, evident from the large number of polythene bags strewn in every major town and city. The alternative to plastic bags are paper bags, jute bags and cloth bags. Paper, Jute and Cloth are eco-friendly. Jute bags are most suitable substitute then paper and cloth, because it is cheaper then cloth and reusable. Though paper bags are cheaper then jute bags but less durable. The Rajasthan Government,  has put a ban to use plastic bags for food stuffs in  Rajasthan.      A Mumbai resident who lived in the United States for many years says every grocery store there offers the option of paper or plastic carrybags. Besides, “large bins are kept outside the stores to collect used plastic bags’’ . Closer home, Delhi’s Shyamala Mani, programme director, waste and resource management, Centre for Environment Education (CEE), advises : “Malls are the best places to easily promote paper,  jute, even non-woven cloth bags and other materials which are biodegradable.’’    The main reason of plastic bag pollution is that the poly-bag comes free. Shop-keepers blindly hand out polythene carry-bags, even if you buy just a tube of toothpaste or a pencil, little caring that the bag will be in the dustbin after some time. The shopkeepers should include the cost of poly bags in the bill, along with other billed products. People will then finally take some steps to reduce the dependence on polythene and try and reuse them or carry cloth bags. The Government will be able to generate extra revenue through polythene tax and the environment will be less polluted with polythene.

An Example of Strict plastic ban in Assam:   Dibrugrah, March 06, 2008: Use of non-degradable plastic as the carry bags has been banned from time to time by the Dibrugrah (Assam) district administration. But since not much was done to ensure people did not use polythene, the “ban” would invariably die a natural death.  This time, the Dibrugarh Municipal Board has decided to take things into its hands and do everything it takes to banish polythene from the town.   As a first step, the civic body will deploy 20 homeguards to keep an eye on shopkeepers and businessmen who have not been heeding the ban on the use of polythene carry bags. And the penalty is not on the shopkeepers alone. If the neighbourhood grocer packs the month’s stock into a polythene bag and the customer only “innocently” carries it home, chances are both the customer and the grocer will be penalised. “We have been forced to take such stringent steps, as it seems that a section of these unscrupulous businessmen have taken the appeals issued by the municipal board as just a formality. We will impose heavy penalty on all those who are still using polythene carry bags,” said Bitul Talukdar, the vice-chairman of the civic body.    Plastic, being non bio-degradable, is a major source of environmental pollution. Besides, they clog the drains causing artificial floods during the monsoon season.    Innovation in Recycling Technology     Centre for Environment Education (CEE) has been awarded the ‘Plasticon 2005 Award' on 1st October 2005 in Mumbai by the PlastIndia Foundation in the category of ‘Innovation in Recycling Technology'  for its innovation of a ‘Polyloom' . The polyloom is a plastic weaving handloom that helps reuse and recycling of discarded plastic bags (polybags).    The concept of ‘polyloom' has been popularized by CEE's Waste Management Initiative as part of its  mandate to address the reuse and recycling of dry waste from domestic garbage. Under this initiative, CEE has established an ‘Ecofriendly Reuse and Recycling Unit' (CEE-ERU) especially for recycling of paper scraps and plastic carry bags. In this unit, paper scrap is recycled by the hand-made paper making method while polybags are reused through the polybags weaving method.    The plastic weaving concept is based on the fact that plastic bags which are thin and flimsy (be it 20µ or less) have an average life time of 2 to 3 hours after which they are discarded. They end up in gutters, dumpsites or on mountain sides and even in the stomachs of animals; they are responsible for clogging, choking, flooding, asphyxiation, landslides, death and destruction. Instead, if they are collected, even from roads, they can be washed, cleaned, dried, cut into strips and woven into the basic plastic textile fabric, which can then be stitched into various products like mats, folders, hand bags and purses. In this manner, both the plastic and paper waste becomes more manageable and less destructive.    The first CEE-ERU was first established in Coorg, Karnataka and subsequently, through various CEE offices, it has also been established in Ahmedabad, Coimbatore , Delhi , Goa , Patna and Tirupathi. Today, the concept has been taken up by many women's self-help groups who gather raw material either by door to door collection or by buying it from rag pickers. This provides them livelihood while taking the plastic carry bags away from the environment.

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