Carry your bags for shopping or pay for carry bags

Have you got used to carrying your own shopping bag to the market? Looks like many shoppers have started doing that ever since the Ministry of Environment and Forests launched the go-green initiative a few months ago, which disallows giving away free plastic bags to customers.

The February 4, 2011 notification of the Ministry of Environment and Forests says,

“ 10. Explicit pricing of carry bags.-

No carry bags shall be made available free of cost by retailers to consumers. The concerned

municipal authority may by notification determine the minimum price for carry bags

depending upon their quality and size which covers their material and waste management

costs in order to encourage their re-use so as to minimize plastic waste generation. “

In Belgaum too the retails chains like Big Bazar, More, Trends are charging for carry bags anywhere between Rs.1 to Rs.3. This trend has not yet come into the regular market.

The Retailers Association of India (RAI), which has enforced the rule for all its members, and there has been a reduction of 56% in the usage of plastic bags ever since shops started charging extra for them.

There has been a mixed response to this from the public, a few feel this is another way to make more money while others feel that as one would be charged they would just take one bag instead of asking for a couple as they did earlier.

The price of the bags needs to be fixed by the City Corporation, but we dont know whether our our Belgaum city corporation is even aware of any such kind of a notification.

The Retailers Association of India (RAI) has fixed the following prices for bags for its members:

For Hypermarket / Supermarket (Value Retail)

• Re 1/-       Bag to hold 2 kgs
• Rs 2/-      Bag to hold 3 kgs
• Rs 3/-      Bag to hold 5 kgs
• Rs 4/-      Bag to hold 10 kgs

For Departmental stores / lifestyle category

• Small Bag             Rs 3/-
• Medium Bag          Rs 5/-
• Large Bags           Rs 7/

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