While the ban announced on plastic packaging across the Nilgiris has largely been welcomed by residents and activists, small business owners and merchants say that they have been severely impacted by the ban because of a lack of alternatives to plastic packaging.
Speaking to The Hindu , restaurant, store and meat stall owners said that though the ban has made things difficult, they have been able to find alternatives to plastics, like the use of banana leaves to pack meat and also in use as plates at bakeries and coffee shops. Some restaurants have even begun insisting on customers bringing their own containers to buy food parcels.
However, business owners like Jyothi Mehta, Managing Director of Jyoti's Cookie Company Private Limited, say that the ban on plastic packaging imposed on local businesses is unfair, considering that products with plastic packaging from outside the Nilgiris is allowed into the district.
“Hypothetically, I will have to send my products to Coimbatore, get it packaged there and bring it back to the Nilgiris, increasing production costs,” said Ms. Mehta.
Small business owners like her and merchants from across the Nilgiris have said that rules applied to local businesses should apply to other manufacturers from outside the district as well, if they want to sell their products here.
R, Parameswaran, district president of the Nilgiris District Merchants Association, said that even the ban on paper and plastic cups made sense, but ban on packaging of other products was simply unfeasible.
Similarly Immanuel Philip from the Rotary Club, who welcomed the initiative to ban plastic, said that the implementation needed to be planned better.
