The Hindu 20.11.2009

APEC for ban on plastic bags at Exhibition

Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD: If everything goes according to the plan, customers heading to the popular Industrial Exhibition held at Nampally every year will have to carry their own bags or buy them at the venue. Members of the Andhra Pradesh Environmental Connect (APEC) will be putting forth an appeal to the president of Exhibition Society, Nampally, to ban plastic bags at the exhibition.

C. Rama Lakshmi, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Environmental Cell), who is spearheading the group with over 850 members, said she was inspired by the ban on plastic bags imposed at the All-India Trade Fair organised annually at Pragati Maidan, Delhi,” she said.

Pointing out that there is hardly any regulation on the kind of plastic bags that are used by shopkeepers inside the exhibition, Ms. Rama Lakshmi says steps should be taken to minimise the usage of plastic bags. “Traders try to cut their expenditure by supplying low quality and coloured plastic bags below 20 microns which are very harmful.

Such plastic covers can’t be recycled and are often eaten up by animals, thrown into drains etc,” she says. The appeal, which lists the environmental hazards of plastics, offers some alternatives to the organisers.

“We have suggested sale of cloth or jute bags. Alternatively, visitors should carry their own bags,” she says. Canteens in the exhibition, APEC members suggested, should keep ceramic cups, paper cup and leaf plates for serving snacks and other items.