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Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

theguardian.com

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Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#171

Post by titzer »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

The environment is more than a single dimension. I'm not going to dispute your stats on individual items here--as far as CO2 goes, maybe you're right. But the oceans and landfills are filling up with non-biodegradable plastic garbage that is weakening ecosystems all over the planet. We need to get our waste pipeline under control at all stages, and plastic packaging is garbage for a long term plan. As evidence I cite every beach in the world. I'll take the spoiled cucumbers and milk; it's wasted energy, it contributes to ecological impact, but ultimately biodegradable.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#172

Post by smdz »

The real reason to ban plastic so strictly in Mumbai is because plastic garbage chokes Mumbai's drainage systems and storm water system. And given the city's population and usage of plastic, the chokes are quite severe during the monsoon (rainy season) when it rains heavily. It is so severe that chokes can lead to extreme flooding and loss of life when it rains heavily and there is an onset of high-tide. The water sometimes has a few hours to leave the land and hence it is critical for the stormwater lines to work efficiently.

Come September this ban will be forgotten again as the monsoon season recedes. While the ban has environment benefits, "they" care little about the "environment"

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#173

Post by Lunatic666 »

EGreg wrote: post #139
vishaltelangre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imposing a ban on "public" and practically making sure that it is followed by the huge population of India is really difficult. We have seen such bans imposed on public before, and none of them were successful till the date. On the other hand, keeping an eye on the handful of (big) companies to restrict them from supplying plastic to people is comparatively an easy task and requires less (man, money and infrastructur…

Arent there eco friendly alternatives already?

I remember that in Germany you can buy bags made from corn starch, but they're very thin and very fragile. You need to be really lucky to bring home your shopping bags safely and you definitely cannot reuse them. But you can put them on the compost, which is really cool! If they work on making it a little more robust, bags like that would be my first choice

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#174

Post by linkmotif »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

> A lot of people bemoan the plastic wrapping on cucumbers, but that wrapping doubles the shelf life of the product. It's a net win, because the environmental impact of wasted cucumbers is far greater than the environmental impact of a gram or two of polyethylene wrapping.

But that is endemic to our insane food system. I think plastic wrapped cucumbers aren’t worth having. If you can’t survive without literally destroying the environment, at least let other animals enjoy Earth.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#175

Post by wetpaws »

simula67 wrote: post #22
simion314 wrote: post #6

A tax seems the fair solution, if it costs X to dispose of a plastic bottle then tax X each bottle, use the money to dispose of the bottle, adjust X if costs change.

In Bangalore, supermarkets used to give away plastic bags for free. Then a law got passed requiring shops to charge for plastic bags. People, however, just kept paying the price for plastic bags and disposing them once they were done with them. Now there is a ban on plastic [1] and people seems to be carrying their own bags into supermarkets and reusing them. But your solution would have been better. It would have gi…

I'm pretty sure that if every bag would cost 10 bucks situation would be quite different.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#176

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eponeponepon wrote: post #92
andrewstuart wrote: post #25

Thank goodness somewhere is taking the obvious action of banning the packaging, which is really just pre-garbage. However, banning packaging only works if it is backed by a system for precisely standardised, refundable and washable containers that food and other products can be shipped in. You can't just say "no packaging". We need a MUCH better form of packaging than disposable/recyclable because recycling only work…

The washable aspect is key - they will have to take steps to work on that too. As a foreigner, when I'm in India, I know that I have to pay attention to (for example) which chai sellers the locals know to wash their cups properly, and to make sure that I see bottles of water are properly sealed before I drink from them. Water in particular will be a problem for foreigners if people start selling or serving it in jugs…

You can use the disposable clay chai cups. But I still think that made me sick.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#177

Post by vfinn »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

It's hardly demonizing without a reason. Sounds almost like a "it's not the guns, it's the bad people" argument, but here plastics will continue to create problems most importantly in the form of microplastics, no matter how you regulate. We continue polluting our waters and the food we eat, and the longer we continue, the more difficult it will be to restore the situation, so we need drastic actions. On top of the obvious (see the related pictures), we have phtalates for example, that we don't know much about.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#179

Post by Brakenshire »

thechao wrote: post #152
wallace_f wrote: post #118

Why can't we agree to just do what Musk says about carbon: tax goods which create negative externalities for society? You could even do it this way: write the law such that an institution, whose job is to eliminate these externalities, is created, and then funded only with taxes on said products. There's two competing special interest groups to keep each in check so in theory it's even a institution which shouldn't h…

Carbon neutral atmospheric recapture of personal vehicle transportation carbon is probably about 600-700$ per ton of carbon. (Based off of practical experiments in the UK.) My read of the literature doesn’t show any hope of this number decreasing. A gallon of gasoline produces 20 lbs of carbon. This puts a carbon neutral tax on consumer gasoline at ~6-7$ per gallon. If you allow 20% “inefficiencies” (tax collection;…

Recapture is a rather extravagant way of pricing carbon. We don’t need to eliminate carbon emissions entirely overnight, we need a certain percentage reduction each year for a few decades, and the carbon cost necessary to achieve that will be a lot lower.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#180

Post by snarf21 »

ohnoesmyscv wrote: post #2

When will US cities do the same? Most restaurants offer plastic togo containers, which ends up in the landfill. Some restaurants even use plastic bowls and plates for dine-in customers, arguably so they don’t have to invest in equipment and labor to wash dishes. With The China recycling ban, this becomes more of a pressing issue. I’m surprised cities aren’t outright banning or imposing a tax on the use of plastics at…

I think it is even more important to ban micro plastics which have invaded our food supply and are ingested with even bigger negative consequences.
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