In a plan put up before the municipal commissioner, the shops and establishments department has proposed to form a five-member team in every ward which will include three ward-level officers, one Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) officer and one local level police officer to monitor implementation of the ban.
Under the rules, plastic bags of any shape or size are banned. So are pouches, containers, bowls and bottles of less than 200ml made of plastic, which are used for packaging food and other items. Articles made of thermocol and plastic for single use such as plates, glasses, etc are all banned. But milk pouches made of virgin plastic with a thickness not less than 50 micron and carrying a buyback price are allowed.
Penalty for use of banned plastic is Rs 5,000 for the first offence, Rs 10,000 for the second offence, and Rs 25,000 for the third offence with imprisonment of 3 months. Production, use, sale, transportation, handling and storage of such plastic products is banned in the state as per a March 23, 2018 notification of the Government of Maharashtra. However, the use of such plastic products in the city remains rampant.
Civic officials said the need to get MPCB officers on board was due to their understanding of regulations. Civic data shows that in the last one year, Rs 79 lakh has been collected as penalty from those using banned plastic. A BMC official said, “Currently we have our teams on the ground acting against those using banned plastic. One of the major challenges we face is with hawkers on roads.”
In the past, BMC had planned to get officers in one civic ward to take action against hawkers from another civic ward using banned plastic. However, this mechanism did not yield results. “Hence we are hoping that the task force formed with officers of various departments is able to crack down on hawkers. In the case of retail stand-alone shops and those situated in malls, use of plastic has been phased out,” said the official. According to RTI activist Anil Galgali, production of plastic too needs to be targeted. “If there is no plastic being produced, it would not reach the market, allowing shop keepers to use it and give it to customers,” said Galgali.
Plastic used for packaging medicine and medical products and those with minimum 20% recyclable material with thickness of more than 50 micron used for wrapping at the manufacturing stage is also allowed.
