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1. The communication about the ban has been very confusing and the retailers do not know what is allowed and what is not
2. There have been so many amendments and relaxations that this has led to further confusion about the scope of the ban and the last date keeps shifting
3. The buy back mechanisms have been left to the retailers for eg some of them are offerring Rs 15 per kg of plastic bags collected - however these systems are ad hoc and also inconvenient for people to wait and collect so much plastic to go back just for 15 rs - there needs to be a standardized buy back system set by the govt
4. In some areas the ban has made an impact and retailers and vegetable vendors have stopped giving out plastic bags.
5. In other areas after trying out alternatives such as newspaper etc they have gone back to using and giving out plastic
6. The initial raids in market yard set a trend for smaller vendors however when market yard started allowing plastic bags even the smaller vendors shifted back to them
7. Many retailers are talking of finishing off old stocks of plastic bags - however six months after the ban was declared they cqannot still have old stocks - so possibly they are buying new stocks.
8. Bin liners are being sold on the street and at signals - there has been a boom in the sales of bin liners - one because they are exempted from the ban and two it may have led to a growing black market with this product - street vendors are hard to track an dpenalise
9. In rural Maharashtra although there is awareness of the ban - very thin plastic is still being used
10. Foreign participants in the meeting also shared their experiences in other countries and they were requested to send us information about the same
11. There was a suggestion that the govt should provide incentives to plastic manufacturers to help them shift to other forms of bag manufacturing or to shift to another industry altogether.
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