Voluntary organisations join battle against plastic

VADODARA, Dec 6: As he offered a Rs 5 note in exchange for a cloth bag, Fatehsinh Rathwa said apologetically, ``But this is in plastic''....

VADODARA, Dec 6: As he offered a Rs 5 note in exchange for a cloth bag, Fatehsinh Rathwa said apologetically, “But this is in plastic”. Both the seller and the buyer were only too aware of the environment-unfriendliness of the material.

His wife Leela was all for the barter, well aware that the cloth bag they were buying was worth hundreds of those ubiquitous plastic bags every other vendor pressed upon them. Late on Saturday evening, Rathwas were among the scores of Vadodara families who did their own little bit towards saving the world by deciding to minimise the use of the plastic bag.

A little earlier, as the winter evening encroached upon the last daylight hours, volunteers of the Nagrik Forum, Sahiyar and Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti had begun to panic, as people appeared to be staying away from their sale of cloth-bags. But their fears were unfounded, and within an hour, they had sold 100 bags and distributed pamphlets asking people to minimise the use of plastic.

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Some where drawn there by sheer curiosity, attracted by the cloth bags that said Plasticna khatrane tado; Kapdai theli vapro (keep away from the hazards of plastic; use cloth bags). But most were receptive to the message succinctly put across by Sahiyar’s Trupti Shah and other volunteers.

“Why should we not use cloth bags?” questioned Vinodkumar Bamania, an armyman from Bhuj. “Even in Bhuj, people are becoming more and more aware of the dangers of using plastic unthinkingly”.

Six-year-old Mitwa Pandya was running all over the place with a fistful of pamphlets. Though too young to appreciate the import of the campaign, she did her own bit by distributing the anti-plastic literature. Her father Raju Pandya said, “The response has been pretty good. The only thing that people have to say for plastic bags is that they come free and saves them the bother of carrying a bag from home”.

While Bharat Shah suggested that cloth bags would be more accessible if they were cheaper, and Ramesh Gokhale said they should be more attractive, Kelavni Vidyalaya principal Sudha Gokhale was certain that she could popularise the cloth bag in her circle. “This is my way of minimising the use of plastic. When my friends see me using cloth bags, it will certainly have an effect on them”, she said.

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Ashwin Soni of Kheda was thrilled to see people selling cloth bags. “I have never seen something like this in Kheda”, he said, predicting that a day would soon come when people would revert to Indian culture and shun plastic.

Among the cloth-bag shoppers yesterday were intellectuals, social workers, men from the police department and senior industrialists. The managing director of a GIDC factory said, “Only a couple of weeks ago, I displayed messages about the harmful effects of plastic. I now intend to get the feedback from the workers”.

A fruit-vendor also came shopping for a bag. “I’ll carry back vegetables in this”, he said.