Amazon, H&M urge to soften the plastic ban in Maharashtra

Multinational companies like Amazon Inc and H&M are associating to soften a ban against single-use plastic imposed by Maharashtra.

The financial capital of our country, Mumbai is suffering due to this ban by Maharashtra government, claims all these multinational organizations. They say the costs for companies that heavily depends on plastic for packaging, such as retailers, beverage makers and sellers of bottled water will sharply raise.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushes a plan to completely end the use of single-use plastic in India by 2022. It is expected that there will be plastic ban applicable to the whole country.

According to United Nations the plastic used for packaging teams up for more than half of all plastic waste globally, and it is observed that most of it is just thrown away in few minutes of it’s use.

The four sources who declined to be named said, Representatives of companies including Amazon, H&M, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, as well as plastic industry bodies and lobby groups, met with Maharashtra government officials days before the ban came into effect on June 23, urging them to implement the rule in phases and relax some norms.

“Our demand to the government is: give the industry seven years to come up with alternatives,” said Neemit Punamiya, general secretary of the Plastic Bags Manufacturers Association of India, who attended the meeting. “It cannot happen overnight – we”ve got investments, we’ve got loans to pay and people to manage.”

Meanwhile, Beverage makers such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola want an exemption from the rules as they mandate a buyback of empty bottles at a guaranteed price, which will raise costs.

Maharashtra’s plastic ban includes bags, food containers, spoons, forks, glasses and packaging wraps – which the local plastics industry says could cost it up to 150 billion rupees a year and nearly 300,000 jobs.

Violations could result in penalties of up to 25,000 rupees ($362.49) and jail terms of up to three months. Nidhi Choudhari, Mumbai’s deputy municipal commissioner, told Reuters it has collected more than 1.3 million rupees in penalties so far.

In short all the retail companies and e-commerce businesses are bothered about the raise in the cost of production which is ultimately derived out of consumers. Well when there is a doubt related discounts given on the costing price that also ends up mostly in profit sales as an all time bluff strategy though it is profitable to consumers as well but not more than the production team. As discounts and sales attracts customers in bulk except some few cases.

Advertising on a larger scale anyways cost them on higher scale which can be diverted to the alternative packaging option and in fact it can be pushed in much appropriate way as a step contributing towards environment creating awareness. Hence the plastic ban should be applied on much harder terms so that no individual can dare to argue it when it comes to save environment over inventions and technological hazards.

Also read: McDonald’s, Starbucks fined for abusing plastic ban in India