Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from Indiaretailing.com, presented here for discussion.
They can be seen everywhere. Rolled and stuffed into a shelf at a grocery store, while carrying the newly bought clothes from a branded showroom; covering the dustbins, clogging roadside drains and cluttering the landfills. They flap from trees. They float on breeze. You got it right. It's polybags. As plastic bags are pretty cheap to produce, sturdy, easy to carry and store, they have captured at least 80 percent of the grocery and convenience store packaging market since they were introduced a quarter century ago.
The Supreme Court in India has prompted the government to ban the usage of polybags by shopkeepers, wholesalers and retailers and asked consumers to use cloth and paper bags. While some retailers are implementing this directive, still many shops in the cities where the ban has been imposed could be seen giving polybags to shoppers instead of jute or paper bags.
In order to protect the environment there are some urgent choices that need
to be made - either formulate plastic that is easily biodegradable, encourage
recycling or switch to shopping bags made of jute, cotton, recycled-paper
or other compostable material.
Biodegradable plastics are plastics that will decompose in the natural environment. Although these plastic bags are biodegradable, it is not as simple as throwing them in a dustbin along with other household waste. Moreover, it takes significant natural resources to grow and process the corn to create this biodegradable plastic.
Overall, reducing indiscriminate consumption and adopting the habit of re-using plastic bags - in effect replacing our addiction to 'disposables' - is the smartest thing we can all do right now as our contribution towards environment protection.
"Plastic bags are so inexpensive that in the stores no one treats them as worth anything; they use two, three or four when one would do just as well," said AG Bhatia, owner, AG departmental store in India.
Discussion Questions: Are you seeing a growing backlash from U.S. consumers over the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags? Are reusable cloth bags the answer? Should retailers be more active in addressing the situation?