Green tribunal raps govt for not doing enough to make Capital plastic-free

The National Green Tribunal order banning the use of plastic bans in the city came on Thursday while the green court was hearing various petitions on waste management and plastic menace in the city.

“The court was hearing Kudrat Sandhu vs Govt of NCT & Ors (which is on municipal solid waste) and All India Plastic Industries Association & Anr vs Govt of NCT of Delhi & Ors (which is review petition from high court, Almira H Patel (which is a pan India garbage management case) and a motion taken up by this court on its own vs NCT of Delhi, regarding plastics choking drains in Delhi. Thursday’s order was a result of all these matters,” a lawyer present at the hearing said.

The lack of enforcement of an order on banning plastic had put the Delhi government under the green court’s scanner earlier too. The green court had prohibited the use of disposable plastic in the city, especially at hotels, restaurants and for public and private functions, while asking the Delhi government to take appropriate steps against “storage, sale and use” of such material from January 1 this year.

“There is a ban order on use of plastic. Why have you not enforced it strictly,” the bench had said on July 31. The counsel appearing for the Delhi government, however, had replied that they have already banned plastic in the city.

The bench then said, “Who says it is banned? Every day, we see plastic lying on roads in different parts of the city. Why don’t you do something?”

The first major step to stop usage of plastics in the city was taken in 2012. A government notification had then said, “no person, including a shopkeeper, vendor, a wholesaler or a retailer, trader, hawker or a rehriwala shall sell, store and use plastic carry bags for supply of any goods”. The then Sheila Dikshit government had also banned manufacture, storage, import, sell or transport of “any kind of plastic carry bags (including polyproplyne, nonwoven fabric ones).”

However, a manufacturers body approached the high court and obtained a stay order. In 2016, the case was sent to the green court.

Bharati Chaturvedi, the director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, said it is very difficult for a layman to understand whether a plastic bag is over 50 microns or not.