SURAT: Birju Pandit, a vegetable vendor at Palanpur market, is not scared to give banned polythene bags to his customers. He keeps a bundle of plastic bags in front of him, without worrying too much about the ban on use of plastic bags below 50 microns.Despite Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) imposing a blanket ban in June on use of plastic bags below 50 microns in the Diamond City, there are vendors, grocers and shopkeepers like Pandit who still give commodities to their customers in them.“Kya kare, customer saman lene aate hai, magar theli nahi late (what we can do, customers come to purchase things, but they don’t bring carry bags), says Radhe Banwari, a fruit vendor, in Adajan. Radhe said, “After plastic bag ban in the city, we started giving away cloth bag in small and big sizes costing Rs2 and Rs5, respectively. But, customers were reluctant to pay for them.”Atul Patel, owner of a dairy shop in Palanpur Patia, said, “Customers don’t want to spend money on cloth bag. They want free plastic bags. After strict drives for a month, now things have settled down and we are getting our daily supply of plastic bags for customers.”Dilsukh Chapaneria, owner of a grocery store in Athwalines, said, “Earlier, we had to go to Bhagal to buy our stock of plastic bags. Now, plastic bag vendors directly supply us our stock twice a day.”At present, out of the 1,800 tonnes of solid waste collection in the city per day, plastic waste comprises more than 100 tonnes of which about 50 per cent is prohibited plastic bags below 50 microns.Many of the shopping malls and departmental stores in the city have been charging anything between Rs5 and Rs20 per cloth bag. A customer, who makes a purchase of Rs1,000, is unwilling to pay Rs20 for big size cloth bag and ends up buying a plastic bag above 50 microns, which costs Rs5 per bag.Dr Ashish Naik, deputy commissioner of health, SMC, said, “We carry out campaigns on regular basis in different municipal zones to seize banned plastic bags. However, when you have more than 25,000 panwalas selling paan and mawa in them, it is very difficult to totally wipe out thin plastic paper used for wrapping.”

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