Twenty-five years ago, when S. Antony Raj established his fish shop at the common market in Tirumangalam, along with his brother S. Stephen Rajan, the duo would pack raw and dry fish with dry leaves and have them folded in newspapers. The buyers would be waiting, a small yellow cloth bag in hand. Forty-nine years old now, Antony Raj has been packing raw and dry fish, using the old method, since the day the ban on single-use plastic came into force. “We request our customers to bring cloth bags to carry fish items. The ban on plastic bags is a welcome measure,” says Antony Raj, who uses dry leaves for packing at his Indian Fish Land shop near the flyover in Tirumangalam.
There is a row of mutton, chicken and fish shops here. Following the ban, all of them have started using dry leaves to pack what they sell.
Antony Raj had played a major role in getting them to shift from plastic covers to dry-leaves packing as he purchases bulk dry leaves from wholesale marts at Koyambedu and Broadway at low rates. Raj says that packing items in dry leaves takes longer, and so he is teaching his four staff as well as those from adjacent shops the nuances of it.
