Delhi takes stringent steps
the Delhi High Court has asked the state government to ban the use of plastic bags in all shopping centres and to come up with a notification in this regard.
The government in 2005 issued a ban on the use of non-degradable polythene. But it was not effectively implemented. In 2007, following a petition by Tapas, a Delhi-based ngo, the court set up a committee to look into the health hazards caused by the use of polythene bags. Based on the committee's report, the court has asked the government to close unlicensed polythene recycling units across the state and increase the thickness of polythene bags from 20 microns to 40 microns. One of the committee's recommendations is to use polythene in construction of roads by blending it with bitumen or using it as partial fuel in cement kilns and blast furnaces of steel plants. The experiment has already been tried in Bangalore. "Even railway sleepers can be manufactured by this waste," says the report. Though the committee report talks about encouraging the use of degradable plastic bags, it says there is no research as to how long it takes to degrade.
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