No more free plastic bags at supermarkets- How far this is useful?

This is just business nothing about environment.. Most of malls don't allow own bags to take inside.. so we are forced to pay for 2-7 Rupees for each bag.. it's really business and to earn extra money.. I had seen a beautiful example in North-East India once.. They have two kind of bags in the mall.. One is paper bag and the other is plastic bag.. Paper bags were free.. and those who want to have plastic bags they have to pay 1 Rs for each bag.. I liked that way to make our environment plastic free.. :-)

This will help in reducing people's dependence on the plastic bags and people will look for paper bags. So, take it positively. Plastics are a major contributor to the pollution. This is what i think.

Here the security guards stop you from taking your own bag into the supermarket! It's really a nuisance! Luckily, only one supermarket is charging for plastic bags (1 cent each). Not a popular supermarket, so I seldom go there.

Instead of doing these things I think more focus should be on the recycling of plastic and I think 1 rupee is not fair for a plastic bag. They can go for nothing more than 5 paisa for a bag (THere is no currency below 50 paisa). Instead of charging they should concentrate on waste management and recycling like in hospitals the waste is categorized and put into different color dustbins and then the recyclable waste is recycled. Why do in india people always go for short term solutions??? This is what came into mind after reading your discussion.

We have the same problem when we went to Canada. They are also selling plastic bags for a price. That's why a small plastic bag is always handy on my bag or in the car. But it is not like that in all places. In Turkey, gladly the plastic bags are not for sale and we are even getting a few more bag at the counter and keep them home. It is also free in Riyadh and they are more generous on giving out more plastic bags. In the Philippines, they also don't give extra bags but they are not selling them as well. The far behind controlling and selling plastic bags is to encourage shoppers to using cloth bags for shopping, this can lessen out the plastic garbages since they are non biodegradable. It is environmentally good, so I advice you to just have a cloth bag or a plastic bag when you shop.

In my opinion the use of plastic bags should be compleatelly stoped insted, use only one plastic bag for all your daily chores or stift to cotton or paprper bags. This will help...