Bhopal, Apr 11: "WE" (Women and Environment) and Regional Museum of Natural History (RMNH), Bhopal jointly launched an active programme to remove the ploythene bags from the environment. At initial level it was started on Thursday at Bittan Market, the biggest Haat at 4.30 pm. WE, is a band of roughly 20 people, comprising of women, some retired, some working, some college kids as volunteers.

The first step was taken around 4.30 pm to the sellers and requested them not to give their vegetables, fruits, spices in polythenes. They were also requested to use paper bags or paper Lifafaas (envelope) and they can ask their buyers to bring bags from home. WE provided six hundred paper bags as token for promotion of recycleable bags to the hawkers in the Haat. The fruits-vegetable hawkers were also requested and advised to directly deliver their items in the bags of the buyer bring along with them.

On interaction with the hawkers it was found that every hawker was using 300-500 polythene bags every market day, which they never wanted as that saves nearly Rs 50 to 100 per seller day, it were the people, who forces the hawkers to cater their demand for polythene bags. Therefore, in the second step at 5 pm, WE interacted with the consumers, the buyers, who were using polythene bags vegetables and fruits, while they were on their way from offices.

Majority of the people aware of the consequences of the flooding use of polythene bags easily agreed to keep and use a recycleable bag the clothejholas (which is made by clothes) in their vehicles. In third step all the members of WE, Deepika Bagchi, Asha Agrawal, Ratna Mukherjee, Shivani Ghosh, Vidya Shukla, Pratibha Kulshrestha, Mahashweta, Nandini Gothalwal, Veena Dadwal, Mili and Jyoti Mishra, advisor SK Kulshresth and volunteers and many others after discussion came out with certain vacts that the hawker never wants to give polythene to consumers.

The public is at the moment only aiming at short-term gains to keep their vegetables segregated and orgnised in the respective refrigerator. Lakhs of polythene are being daily carried and thrown afterwards in the city to chock the gutters, Nallas (drain) and spoiling the soil for natural vegetable putting a pressure for survival altogether on the flora and fauna including man of the city. So the outcome at the moment is that WE along with keeping up the personal contact programmes, in public places, will have to approach the authorities, and persuade them to Ban The Use of Polythene" as it has already been done elsewhere in the country.