The ban on the production and sale of polythene bags has had hardly any impact, with the production of the banned item and its rampant use by the city people still going on.
Users and environmentalists have blamed absence of cost-effective environment-friendly alternatives as well as inadequate drive against polythene bag manufacturing.
Zakia Parveen, a housewife of Segunbagicha, said, ‘How will I carry vegetables, meat, fish and fruit from market without polythene shopping bag? ‘We never buy polythene shopping bags rather salesmen provide it free of cost with each and every item.’
Nur Miah, salesman of New Market kitchen market, told New Age that customers come empty handed and want polythene shopping bags to carry groceries.
About the ban, he said that he never heard of such a ban and that all were buying and selling polythene shopping bags in every kitchen market.
From kitchen markets to shopping malls, polythene bags are available everywhere as the government failed to provide the consumers with any alternative, said Save the Environment Movement chairman Abu Naser Khan.
The environmentalist said a few initiatives were taken to implement the ban which came in January 2002 and was imposed on manufacture, import, marketing, sales, stock, distribution, commercial carriage or commercial use of the item.
In January 2010, the department of environment allowed partial use of polythene under certain conditions.
The department allowed three categories of polybags to be manufactured for transporting fish fries, preserving mushrooms and packaging food items, he said.
Waste polythene shopping bags block drains, canals, rivers and ultimately cause water stagnation, said Naser.
He said the department of environment conducts drive and fines some accused people but the drives have proved too ineffective to check the production, marketing and sale of these bags.
Seeking anonymity, a retailer of Chawkbazar said that there were around 300-350 factories manufacturing polythene bags in Dhaka and the major polythene bag wholesale markets are in Chawkbazar, Moulvibazar and Begumbazar in Dhaka.
Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation director marketing Shahadat Hossain acknowledged that production of jute bags was costlier than polythene bags.
He said a jute bag costs Tk 8-10 when people can get polythene bags free of cost from vendors when they buy any grocery items.
BJMC official also added that they mainly produce jute bags of 50-100kgs capacity for rice millers, retailers, cement factories and food industries.
Even the jute diversification promotion centre officials said small entrepreneurs who took advice from this centre were not also interested to produce small shopping bags with jute which would be an alternative to polythene shopping bag.
Department of environment’s director (Dhaka region) Abul Monsur said they conducted regular enforcement drive to check use of polythene shopping bag.
-With New Age input
