Mumbai: In a relief to e-commerce companies, plastic packaging material used for products intended for sale outside Maharashtra through e-commerce will be allowed, stated a June 30 government notification. However, plastic packaging material used for products intended for sale within Maharashtra through e-commerce shall be allowed for three months from July 1 onwards.
These three months, from July onwards, would buy the e-commerce industry a window to create a mechanism for the collection of the plastic packaging material through a buy back and ensure the recycling and final disposal of the recollected materials, said the notification. The state government has been considering a ban on plastic packaging of e-commerce products as well as plastic bottles with a capacity of less than 200 millilitres.
Tetra and Multi-layered packaging are the new inclusion in the state-wide plastic ban. These firms, too, have been given three months’ time to come up with a mechanism to collect and recycle used packets, failing which they will impose a ban. The move has come at a time when the state is struggling to implement the plastic ban in its original form. Earlier, it had removed PET and PETE bottles used for soft drinks and packaged water from the purview of the ban.
“Tetra packs and multi-layer packaging are responsible for pollution and choking of drains. We have decided to bring them under extended producers’ responsibility, which makes it mandatory for manufacturers to ensure their collection and recycling,” said a senior state official. Following threats from retailers of an indefinite strike, the state environment minister Ramdas Kadam on Wednesday had declared that retail packaging would be dropped with certain conditions. Retail packaging and E-commerce products were not part of the original plastic ban announced on March 23.
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