Let’s Say No To Plastic

Aashish Mishra

Multiple photos were viral on social media the week before last. They showed the situation of the Pashupatinath Temple, arguably the holiest shrine in the country, after Bala Chaturdashi. The entire complex was littered with plastic bags and packets which had caused a mess and had polluted the Bagmati River and the Shleshmantak Forest too.

Plastics have long been frowned upon in Nepal and the government has tried to eliminate their use numerous times. The most recent notable attempt was made by the then KP Sharma Oli-led government while presenting the budget for the fiscal year 2021/22. In the budget, the federal government announced the banning of the import, manufacture, sale and distribution of all plastic measuring below 40 microns in width from July 16, 2021. It also required stores and malls to provide biodegradable cotton, jute or paper bags to their customers instead of plastic ones. 

This move was hailed by environmental groups as a big step against plastic pollution. However, as shown by the Bala Chaturdashi photos, it has not decreased plastic use. Perhaps because the state has, so far, not taken policy initiatives hand in hand with awareness campaigns. Because, at least in Kathmandu, big shops have tried to phase out plastic bags on their own. But customers keep demanding it. Buyers do not bring bags from home and are unwilling to pay a few rupees extra for cloth or paper bags. And many shopkeepers worry that if they deny people plastic, they will lose customers.

This columnist has experience working in stores and can say with reasonable confidence that Nepal’s plastic-banning steps have not really taken  consumer habits into account. They have sought to curb supply but have not looked at stopping demand which has limited their effectiveness.

People want plastic bags because they can be used for everything from wrapping garbage to packing food. Paper bags tear easily and cloth bags are too precious to put rubbish in and throw out. That is why customers specifically ask for plastic bags even when offered alternatives. This is what we need to understand.

Having said that, shops and stores could also do more to push non-plastic options on their customers. After all, they have the most to gain by reducing plastic. They have to spend thousands of rupees every year to purchase plastic bags, money they will save if they do not have to dispense plastic for free to their buyers. But, still, changing consumer preferences and habits takes time. It would be ideal for everyone if the authorities and the retailers collaborated with each other to draft and implement a strict anti-plastic campaign. 

But for the immediate term, businesses can look at what supermarkets have done as they have achieved some degree of success in orienting clients away from plastic. Bhat-Bhateni Supermarket and Departmental Store, for instance, has been discouraging the use of plastic bags in its stores across the country since 2016.

It did encounter pushback at first with many customers expressing frustration and anger but eventually, everyone realised that Bhat-Bhateni was not a place for plastic and began using alternatives or taking bags from home.

To wean consumers off plastic, the store chain also ran a campaign to donate a certain amount of the money collected from selling biodegradable bags to a non-governmental social organisation. This provided a cause for people to invest in and lessened resistance. Today, it sometimes ditches the traditional ‘Jhola’ altogether and uses cardboard cartons to put people’s items in. 

But, at the end of the day, we must all realise that if we are to get people to favour cotton or cloth over plastic, we must make the former as affordable as the latter. Today, customers get plastic bags for free while cloth bags cost money. Retailers do not think twice about handing out plastic ‘Jhola’ but charge money for alternatives, which is where things go wrong. Why would people pay (no matter how small an amount) for something when they feel they can get something equally good for free? So, we either need to make plastic expensive or other options free or considerably cheap. The model we have now does not work.

To sum up, the government has repeatedly failed at stopping plastic through supply-side regulations. So, now, it is time to look at the demand side of things. It needs to make people aware of the benefits of letting plastic go and give them social and financial incentives to do that. A nation without plastic cannot be achieved until we do this.