Ask for your free carry bag

Pushpa Girimaji

I have been reading about the orders of consumer courts in Chandigarh directing retail outlets to provide carry bags free of charge. But what I want to know is how did this practice begin in the first place?

It all began with the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests notifying the Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules in 2011, requiring all retailers to provide only plastic carry bags of a specified quality. While doing so, the rules said: “No carry bags shall be made available free of cost by retailers to consumers.” It was hoped that instead of paying for the carry bag, consumers would prefer to bring their own bags, thereby bringing down their consumption. It was also meant to encourage retailers to sell plastic bags of specified quality. The government also wanted the proceeds from the sale of the carry bags to finance plastic waste management efforts.

However, the only purpose that the provision served was to start a trend of retailers asking consumers to pay for the carry bag. That was not all. As the rules defined ‘carry bags’ as those made of plastic, the direction to retailers not to make available carry bags for free, applied only to plastic bags. However, the retailers began to sell even paper and cloth bags. 

The rules also required municipalities to work out the minimal price of the plastic bag, taking into account the material cost as well as the cost of waste management and issue a notification to that effect. Ironically, when the Ministry replaced the 2011 rules with a new set of rules in 2016, it pointed out that, first of all, most civic authorities had not fixed the price as required; secondly, the rules were silent on the mode of transfer of money collected by retailers from the sale of plastic carry bags to the civic authorities!

So, the 2016 rules fixed this lacuna and said that the amount paid towards the (plastic) carry bag would be utilised exclusively for waste management by civic authorities. It also wanted the retailers to put up boards in prominent places announcing that carry bags would not be given free. Frankly, I never saw such boards and it’s anybody’s guess as to how this new system worked. In any case, in March 2018, when the government brought in certain amendments to the 2016 rules, it dropped the provision that required retailers to sell plastic carry bags, as, by then, many states had already banned or were in the process of banning them. However, retailers continued to sell carry bags and, this time, paper bags! And when this was challenged in the consumer courts, some of them argued that they cited the rules!

Thus, a well-meaning but badly enforced provision in the rules brought on consumers an additional burden of paying for the bags. What makes it worse is that the consumers are also paying for the promotion of the retailer through the carry bag. And the retailer not only makes a neat profit on the bag, but also makes you pay for his brand promotion. Even if he is selling the bag at cost price, consumers are still paying for the printing of the advertisements on the bags and this is by no means ethical.

Will these orders halt this practice?

Thanks to the consumers who decided to challenge this practice, today we have consumer court orders asking retailers to provide carry bags for free. You can be sure that retailers will not accept it so easily. They have challenged the orders of the Chandigarh District Forum and already in two cases the Chandigarh (UT) State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has upheld the orders of the District Forum (Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd Vs Pankaj Chandgothia and another, Appeal NO 24 of 2019 and Westside Vs Sapna Vasudev Appeal No 36 of 2019). It held that selling carry bags to consumers is an unfair trade practice. I expect the retailers to go to the apex consumer court and even the Supreme Court if necessary and that will finally settle the issue once for all.

I must mention that the Chandigarh consumer court orders have had a tremendous impact on consumers around the country and they have begun to express their anger and resentment over the practice of retailers selling carry bags.