Rajkot Municipal Corporation’s ‘returnable’ cloth bag a win-win idea for all

RAJKOT: Still forgetting to carry your ‘jhola’ from home while heading to the market? Don’t worry, you are not the only one. There are many others who are still struggling to get accustomed to the ban on Single Use Plastic (SUP) bags, particularly rampant in the vegetable market.
It has now become commonplace to see customers and vendors squabbling over these bags.Looking at this peculiar inconvenience, the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) is coming with an unique idea to deal with the situation and provide bags to people who need these and also for free.
While the central government increased the micron level of carry bags in order to make these more environmentally friendly, the upshot is that these ‘revised’ bags are now expensive and vegetable vendors can’t afford to keep any.
Even in the past, the RMC had distributed such cloth bags at various vegetable markets to the customers but there are some regular offenders who would almost never bring their own bags. Again, if a vegetable vendor charges them for the bags, it triggers a verbal spat on the spot.
To find a permanent solution to this vexed problem, the RMC, which has over 100 vegetable and fruit hawker zones in various plots in the city, will distribute cloth bags having RMC logos to vendors in such zones.
The hawkers will be told to collect Rs 15 per bag from the customer who requires a bag. The customer can return the bag to any hawker of any such zones out of the 100 designated hawker zones and get a refund of Rs 15.
The civic body is also mulling to invite advertisements on these cloth bags to reduce its price.
Nilesh Parmar, environment engineer of RMC said, “We are in talks with some NGOs to execute this idea. We are planning to implement this scheme first in all our hawker zones. After learning about all the practical problems, we are mulling to implement this scheme with various grocery stores in the second phase. It’s a win-win scheme for everyone.”
The bag will continue to change hands, and at the end, the RMC will also come up with an idea to collect ripped bags and pay some amount to the vendor after the bag becomes unusable.