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India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

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Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#81

Post by bendermon »

tn13 wrote: post #75
geodel wrote: post #35

I do not see any coverage in Indian media. Could it be one of those official notifications which public at large hardly follows but it breeds corruption by enforcement officials. Though looking at Indian papers I came across this rather frightening news: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollutio...

That is how India rolls. I am not sure how the poor street food vendors survive if they cant use plastic plates and spoons. If they are forced to use steel plates and spoons that is a health and safety nightmare in India.

There are plenty of cost effective traditional alternatives. Banana leaves, hand made leaf plates, machine made leaf plates, in the worst case paper plates.

Plastics are just convenient and cheap, if the environmental costs are not considered.

Edible cutlery http://www.bakeys.com/

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#83

Post by M_Grey »

tn13 wrote: post #75
geodel wrote: post #35

I do not see any coverage in Indian media. Could it be one of those official notifications which public at large hardly follows but it breeds corruption by enforcement officials. Though looking at Indian papers I came across this rather frightening news: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollutio...

That is how India rolls. I am not sure how the poor street food vendors survive if they cant use plastic plates and spoons. If they are forced to use steel plates and spoons that is a health and safety nightmare in India.

You have it backwards... the poor vendors can't afford a stock of disposable plates. They're the ones who give you something into the hand, or on a tin plate. You have to remember what "poor" means there.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#84

Post by rjurney »

This is awesome. When I was in India ten years ago, everywhere we went in rural India the trees along creeks, rivers and streams were littered with plastic bags from where floods had deposited them. They were like leaves, and the trees were dead. They had already banned plastic bags locally in that province, and it is good to see a global ban on plastic in general.

In Himachal Pradesh, the plastic bag ban had resulted in a cottage industry forming where discarded newspapers were folded/glued into shopping bags. I'd like to see this same thing happen in the US. A friend imported a palette of these bags to Florida, and he was able to sell them to vendors and make a small profit. This tells me they might be viable here commercially.

As they say, reduce > re-use > recycle.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#85

Post by dirkg »

Good in principle, will cause hardships for many in practice. There are probably millions of street vendors who rely on plastic to pack food to go, as well as many other shops of course.

There are many other priorities to focus on which can have a far bigger impact.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#86

Post by XJOKOLAT »

sqeaky wrote: post #52
wavefunction wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told this too. There was a massive anti-littering campaign in the 1950s called "Keep America Beautiful" and it was ironically initiated by the packaging industry[0]. [0] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-...

I don't think its ironic at all. Some American industries actually do attempt to pro-actively fix issues to insure long term profitability. Consider groups like UL or ESRB, no government intervention there. I like the example of pesticides. The are some really nasty pesticides that aren't banned by law, but there are industry groups that work to reduce and effectively ban the ones that cause birth defects and obvious…

Self-generated codes-of-good-practice usually emerge from out of the shadow of a big governmental stick on the horizon.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#88

Post by tracker1 »

jws wrote: post #76
DrScump wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Silicon Valley, there is far more trash along highways than there was 30 years ago, well beyond simple per-capita pace.

I've driven through quite a bit of the United States. Attitudes to roadside littering vary wildly. Some eastern Washington state highways and rural Kentucky highways have mind bogglingly improbable amounts of litter for the number of people which travel them. Time to roll out the "Crying Indian Ad" for another generation.

Littering just pisses me off... I think that and vandalizing publicly accessible restrooms are the two things most likely to inspire a violent response in my mind. It's a complete lack of morality and respect for other's property, and community in general.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#89

Post by 65827 »

bendermon wrote: post #81
tn13 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how India rolls. I am not sure how the poor street food vendors survive if they cant use plastic plates and spoons. If they are forced to use steel plates and spoons that is a health and safety nightmare in India.

There are plenty of cost effective traditional alternatives. Banana leaves, hand made leaf plates, machine made leaf plates, in the worst case paper plates. Plastics are just convenient and cheap, if the environmental costs are not considered. Edible cutlery http://www.bakeys.com/

Your idea of "cost effective" is quite different from an Indian street vendor.

Re: India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi

#90

Post by astrodust »

walrus01 wrote: post #72
xyzzy4 wrote: post #8

Plastic is the least of Delhi's problems. First they should be banning vehicles that don't meet emission standards. I visited there twice and I'll be lucky if I don't come down with some lung problem. Edit: They should ban the burning of plastic, not plastic itself. And enforce it.

Your comment comes off as harsh and ignorant, but is IS a fact that pollution from two stroke engines (and other inefficient burning things) is a huge problem in large developing nation cities. Go look at the air in Lahore or Karachi on a bad day and view the blue-grey smoke emitting from every two stroke motorcycle and motor-rickshaw.

These countries will benefit immeasurably when electric/battery scooters are cheap, efficient, and superior in every way to their unbelievably noisy two-stroke counterparts. It's amazing that one dinky little vehicle can make so much pollution and racket.

Leaf blowers used to be exclusively crappy two-stroke engines that would make a huge racket. Now at least there's a lot of electric competition.

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