After PM Modi’s clarion call to stop the use of single-use plastic, people from across the country have started either reducing the plastic from their daily lives or adopting an alternative to it.

Plastic Lao, Thaila Pao

United Nations Development Programme, as the avenue to curb the use of plastic, launched a sustainable campaign – Plastic Lao, Thaila Pao in Delhi’s Connaught Place. It acts as a barter system where one needs to collect and segregate plastic waste and then deposit into the respective boxes for which one gets recycled cloth bags at the eco exchange stall.

UNDP’s Resident Representative in India, Ms. Shoko Noda, IAS officer, Dr. Rashmi Singh, Hindustan Coca- Cola Beverages’s Vice President, Umesh Malik, handed out the first set of cloth bags to the Safai Saathis – the participants of this campaign.

Exchange plastic with cloth bags

Interestingly, the campaign has exchange rates in terms of plastic ─ 10 pieces of mixed plastic products, 20 pieces of MLPs (Multilayered Plastics) of at least 100 gms and above, 10 PET (Polyethylene terephthalate, a form of polyester), 20 toothbrushes or straws, and 15 pieces of plastic bags of normal size of 1-2 kg carrying capacity, get you a cloth tote bag.

The Safai Saathis also pledged their support to create sustainable and environmentally friendly.

The campaign aims at behavioural change which is an indispensable aspect of seeing the prevailing state of the environment.

Waste segregation is primarily part to keep the habitat safe. Usage of cloth bags instead of plastic bags plays a vital role in beating the plastic
pollution. The substitute for plastic bags will not only cease the sale of items benefiting the producer but on the other side, it will keep the environment-friendly.

It exhorts each one of us to move towards the elimination of plastic from our life.

(The views expressed in the article are the author’s own. Let Me Breathe neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)