CHENNAI: Normal plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to decay. So, the use of normal plastic should be banned to ensure the healthy living. Since most of us don’t carry any bags while we shop, the shop owners should offer cloth, jute or paper bags only, though they’re more expensive than plastic bags. Recently, few shop owners have started using some bags that are similar to cloth bags. Study shows that they are not cotton bags and it has 98.3 per cent of polypropylene, which is a non-biodegradable material. “Most of the paper and jute bags are not biodegradable as they have been either polycoated or chemical treated. They do not biodegrade faster as we expected,” explained TS Shankker, director of Biotec Bags India Private limited. “The issue with cloth, jute and paper bags is that it requires 50 times more landfill area. More number of transportation of garbage will result in more carbon food print. Hence biodegradable plastic bags are the only best alternate to solve all the problems,” he adds. These bags biodegrade in the soil within a year under normal environment condition. Any plastic bag that satisfies certain conditions can be called as genuine biodegradable plastic. The Ministry of Environment and Forest should not insist in manufacturing biodegradable plastic above 40 micron; they should allow even 20 micron biodegradable plastic also. Less micron will biodegrade faster.
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