When inspectors of Lucknow Municipal Corporation raided a prominent sweetmeat shop at the busy Bhoothnath market and confiscated plastic boxes on the ground that plastic and polythene were banned, the traders were shocked as they were never told by the administration that even plastic boxes came under single-use plastic and were banned.

The LMC officials imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 and seized 9.5 kg of plastic boxes in which the shop used to pack kulfi and other sweets.

A fuming owner of the sweetmeat shop, Darshan Singh, said that no one told him that these plastic boxes were banned.

“There has been no advertisement, no notice. The municipal corporation officials swooped on my shop and seized plastic boxes and threatened that the shop will be sealed if I did not pay the fine. The challan they gave me shows that I have been fined for illegal possession of polythene while not a single polythene or plastic carry bag was seized from my shop,” he said.

“I even spoke to the district magistrate and he said that plastic boxes were not banned. If so, why plastic boxes were seized (from my shop) in the name of ban on plastic and polythene? The challan that the LMC gave me also says that Rs 25,000 has been charged for confiscating polythene but we do not keep polythene bags,” Singh said showing the challan to this reporter.

This incident clearly indicates that the municipal corporation officials do not know what exactly is banned and what they are supposed to seize. One big question is that when the government issues big advertisements almost every day on government projects, why did it not publicise what items of plastic are banned and what are not.

Traders are angry over the lack of transparency in these raids. “The government should issue a guideline on which plastic is banned and which is not. Today only, we came to know that even plastic boxes come under single-use plastic category and thus are banned,” said president of Bhoothnath Traders’ Association, Devendra Gupta.

“I deal with garments. Shirts and girls’ dressing materials come in polythene packing. Is it banned? Neither we nor the government has clarity about it,” he said, showing shirts neatly packed in plastic.

Another traders’ leader, Sandeep Bansal, said that the government should clarify what was good plastic and what was bad plastic. 

“The government is allowing sale of mineral water in plastic bottles and branded chips in plastic bags but is harassing poor traders and hawkers. At least keep the trader on the same page and tell him what he should use and what he should not,” he said.

Officials also are not clear about the category of banned polythene and plastic. “We have been told that polythene less than 50 micron thickness is banned. But there are polythene and plastics that are used as packaging material. Whether they too are banned, we do not know. We seize only those items which our seniors ask us to do,” the officer told this reporter on condition of anonymity.                                                                               

Amid the confusion, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi warned that if traders were found using plastics and polythene, they would be fined and their shops would be sealed. “We have received complaints that traders are using polythene bags for every item they sell. This should end or traders should get ready to cough up fines,” he said.

The UP government went into an overdrive to ban plastic after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s independence speech in which he pitched for freedom from single-use plastic.

Swati Singh Sambyal of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi said that polythene and plastics were banned in one form or the other in almost 22 states of India but barring Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, the ban was not much effective.

“The reason is that governments issue notifications but do not publicise them. It is the responsibility of the government to widely publicise (the notification on ban) so that there is clarity. So when government imposes ban on polythene and plastic, people stop using it for a few days and then start reusing them again,” she told this reporter over phone from New Delhi.

“You need to give an alternate to the people. You need to involve NGOs and civil society to educate people why they should not use polythene and what are the substitutes available to them,” Sambyal said.

The other day Shalabh Saxena bought flavoured milk pouch from government-owned Parag milk outlet. The shopkeeper gave him the pouch of milk but not the straw saying it was banned. 

“I bought the milk for my son but without a straw how could he to drink it. If plastic straw is banned, give us an alternative,” he said.

Plastic packaging accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste and much of it is thrown away within minutes of its first use. 

Dr SK Pandey of RML Hospital in Lucknow said that plastic waste was a big environmental hazard as it blocked drainage systems, collected in waterways and caused other environmental and health problems.

“There is evidence that toxic chemicals added during its manufacture transfer to animal tissue, eventually entering human food chain,” Pandey said.