CR plans to ban use of plastic at railway stations

In order to ban usage of plastic on the railway stations, the Central Railway (CR) authorities have planned to replace plastic glasses with the paper glasses in the suburban trains and station in the city. A senior railway official said this week they will be conducting a meeting to take a decision on the complete ban on usage on the railway station and its surroundings.

“We will be holding a meeting this week with catering staff, Indian Railway Catering Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) officials and railway stall owners to discuss on the action plan for banning the use of plastics on railway stations,” added official.

CR official said due to plastic the surroundings of the railway's areas have become a dumping ground where there is an accumulation of tonnes of litter which mostly consist of plastic wastes mixed with silt and muck.

The state government has given a time period to implement the plastic ban. We would be looking at all the available options to replace plastic products.

“We will implement the ban strictly at all our railway stations. We would also be discussing the installation of recycling machines in the meeting,” said SK Jain, divisional railway manager, CR.

The official from IRCTC said even they are planning to replace the plastic glasses with paper glasses and they will follow law accordingly and implement it.

Moreover, there are around 200 water vending machines (WVMs) that have been installed in the suburban stations of Mumbai which allows one to either fill water in their own bottles or use plastic glasses.

Each WVM has a capacity to hold 200-400 litres of water and approximately contains 300-500 plastic glasses. "We have time till June as the deadline for the plastic ban. We are in the process of replacing the plastic glasses, wafer covers and everything that is being banned," said a senior rail official.

Further, the railways also plan to introduce a Do’s and Don’ts manual with respect to plastic products. The manual would consist of a list of plastic products which cannot be used by the food stall owners at stations.