Plastic Bags : The Ban or The Bane?

If I am not mistaken, it was last year in October, that a blanket ban on plastic bags was imposed in India. Of course, there is a certain micron rating for the ban and those falling below the same are banned.

Of course, from what we observe, what can be deduced is that all bags in Retail Stores are definitely above the 40 Micron rating hence they are still in circulation. However, the ban has helped Retailers in two ways. One is that since the customer has a choice of whether to take a bag or not, the consumption of bags on the whole might have gone down however I am not sure if this has actually happened. However, the second and more important way in which it has helped Retailers is by ensuring that they charge for the plastic bags and hence are able to recover the cost at least, in case they aren't making a cool profit as well.

Of course, we will need to review the data on this, however from everyday observation, Plastic Bags at Retail shops have definitely not gone out of circulation. Moreover they have become a good source of revenue for them. So much so that the person at the billing counter wants you to take a bag so that he can promptly add another Rs 5 to the bill.

So what has this ban done for the environment in terms of reducing circulation of Plastic Bags? Zilsch. What has it done for Consumer awareness in terms of not using a plastic bag? Zilsch since Rs 5 is too small an amount and most consumers are willing to pay this. For the retailer? Well not only has it subsidised one of their activities which wasn't adding revenue, it probably is also Contributing to the bottom line as well since the cost of the plastic bag would surely be less than Rs. 5.

So is this a Ban or a Bane ?

Comments

Ken Macklin said…
I think this will not stop the use of plastics by any means. They could have replaced those with Paperbags or something else, that is remotely a solution. This will benefit the retail guys. This case looks very similar to the one presented in Freakanomics where raising the late pickup fee for parents in a day care centre in Tel Aviv did not prompt them to come early - but only later as they really did not mind paying a lil more, but when that unreasonably hiked - there were a few desirable repercussions. Putting a price on plastic bags does not solve anything. Put in viable replacements - "Use a paperbag", "Sorry, we dont use plastics [stick to that]" - such measures may work :) nice post man !!
March 14, 2012 at 10:43 PM
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