{"id":2268,"date":"2016-03-26T13:46:45","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T08:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/plastic-ban-maharashtra-gudi-padwa\/"},"modified":"2016-03-26T13:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T08:16:45","slug":"plastic-ban-maharashtra-gudi-padwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2268","title":{"rendered":"Life After Plastic. It\u2019s Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

P<\/span>lastic used for packaging is <\/p>contraband in Maharashtra. The ban commenced on June 23, 2018.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nWith the development, life was suddenly full of complications for at least three generations that grew up in Urbs Prima in Indis. Existential questions ranging from, \u201cWill the little plastic tripod on the Domino\u2019s pizzas be done away with?\u201d to \u201cIs it still okay to wrap the used <\/span>sanitary napkin <\/span><\/a>in those bright green plastic thingies they come in?\u201d had been anxiously doing the rounds.<\/span>\n\nThe state government\u2019s second serious <\/span>effort <\/span><\/a>to let the metropolis\u2019 lungs breathe is laudable no doubt, even if riddled with implementation problems. When the Mithi choked on the regurgitated plastic discarded by apathetic citizens in 2005, the administration\u2019s decision to ban the 20 micron carry-away plastic bags was met with derision. Catch us if you can, said the <\/span>macchiwala<\/span><\/a> and the sabziwala. The grahak, so long inured to walking hands-free to the market and returning with bulging plastic bags looking like a teenager after a Forever 21 sale, couldn\u2019t care less. <\/span>\n\nThe malleability of the fabricated bag, cup, straw and plate had made us forget that we had managed to live \u2013 quite happily \u2013 before the convenience of plastic. So what gives? Why do we deal with this question with the perplexity of a teenager who wonders how his parents ever survived before the advent of the <\/span>mobile phone<\/span><\/a>?<\/span>\n

There are mothers out there who steadfastly scoffed at the idea of disposing even the ziplock bags after a single use.<\/blockquote>\nThere are generations around, and I don\u2019t mean the geriatric ones, who still remember swinging a cloth bag to the market to buy onions, and standing in line at the government\u2019s subsidised booths to collect their daily ration of milk bottles. The local butcher wrapped up your mutton in yesterday\u2019s newspaper, and trusty old Wibs bread came packaged in butter paper that was then used to wrap the next day\u2019s tiffin sandwiches. Mothers recycled old frocks into jaunty little sling bags that could be used for carrying books to tuitions or for lugging the month\u2019s provisions home from the local kirana store.<\/span>\n\nNo one thought twice about taking a steel dabba from home to the sweetmeat shop to pack in a dozen rasgullas for the family lunch, and the same went for packing the sambhar when you wanted to parcel a dosa for home consumption from the <\/span>local Udupi restaurant<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\n\nPlastic, the ever-resilient champion, changed the equation. Plastic adapted itself like a shape-shifting hydra to suit our urban needs. <\/span>Chai <\/span><\/a>at the local tapri could now be served out of wobbly little plastic cups or packed in even wobblier plastic bags and ordered up to office. The paper straws that suffered abominable malfunctioning in young hands trying to slurp Coca-Cola in the pre-George Fernandes days bowed out to funky plastic ones that bent any way you liked. The good old newspaper was nudged out of service for packing parwal, pomfret, or poultry from the market down the lane, sending the raddi sector into a tailspin it\u2019s probably never recovered from. In the perishables market, the Plastic Revolution came a close second only to the Industrial one in impact. <\/span>\n\nRestaurants followed. Retail brands followed. Households followed. <\/span>\n\nBut like all good Indians who won\u2019t give up on a tube of toothpaste until it\u2019s been sucked dry with help of a rolling pin, plastic found several rebirths in each household. Important property documents and bank papers were carefully stored away in plastic bags that came from sari shops or Raymond\u2019s outlets. The sturdier of these fancy bags made lasting liners for kids\u2019 school bags during the <\/span>monsoon<\/span><\/a>. Takeaway containers were washed, dried, and recycled to pack in laddoos for the son to take back to the <\/span>hostel<\/span><\/a> in the next term. There are mothers out there who steadfastly scoffed at the idea of disposing even the ziplock bags after a single use. Why waste a good product that could be rinsed and reused? <\/span>\n\nBut of course, as with all these things urban, there was no end to the gluttony of the market. <\/span>\n\nYoung <\/span>millennials<\/span><\/a>, reared on plastic money, any way have little need or patience for a lifestyle that needs lesser plastic and a bit more effort. For this generation, everything consumable came out of a tetrapak or a PET bottles. Those born after the \u201980s can hardly be faulted for wondering if there can be any substitute for the hardy, resilient plastic: Swiggy\u2019d food is delivered in throwaway dabbas, groundnuts sold on the local are plastic-packed, and 90 per cent of the Chinese knick-knacks that populate the living room are made of the wonder material anyway. Plastic didn\u2019t rust, plastic was water-proof, and plastic could be moulded to every need.<\/span>\n\nProducer, trader and consumer all connived, unintentionally fostering an economy that\u2019s ended up clogging our drains, cluttering our beaches, and choking our environment. It needed stringent activism and some determined government push to remind us that we have done once without plastic, and probably can do again. <\/span>\n\nNot since <\/span>demonetisation <\/span><\/a>has one seen the trader community so concerned. With <\/span>GST <\/span><\/a>they thought they had seen the worst of it all, but the plastic ban, goes the consensus, hits below the belt. The local farsan shop owner looks at the piles of stock neatly packed in plastic pouches, and wonders if he\u2019s now got to unpack it all, and the nursery down the road is wondering if its baby saplings, nurtured in their black plastic pouches, will soon lose their cosy cribs. The garbage collector harrumphs in glee when I ask him, and says he will be happy to see the last of the plastic jholis, even as he rubs choona on his palm, and flicks its plastic wrapping behind him. My mother on the other hand, assiduously stores all the bags that come her way. \u201cThese are high demand,\u201d she says.<\/span>\n\nBut when it\u2019s all done, we will hopefully revert to a more innocent age where no one minded drinking coffee out of steel tumblers that were rinsed after a quick dunk in the bucket. Or bringing home fish that often bore the imprint of kal ki taaza khabar. It will be a world where we can, hopefully, breathe easier, walk barefoot on the beach without getting our feet entangled in a wrapper or a bag. <\/span>\n\nIn an ideal world, all that remains plastic will probably be our politicians\u2019 smiles. There\u2019s hardly anything we can do about that.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years before plastic became pervasive, you went to buy ration swinging a cloth bag. The local butcher wrapped up your mutton in yesterday\u2019s newspaper. But plastic adapted itself like a shape-shifting hydra to suit our urban needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":2269,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[4568,19,243,4569,4570,4571,22,4572,4573],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth","tag-cloth-bags","tag-india","tag-mothers","tag-plastic","tag-plastic-bags","tag-preservation","tag-relationships","tag-urban-india","tag-urban-needs"],"yoast_head":"\nLife After Plastic. It\u2019s Fantastic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Years before plastic became pervasive, you went to buy ration swinging a cloth bag. 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