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The three month long campaign to bring awareness about the ban on usage of plastic bags in Moodbidri Town Municipal Council has finally resulted in the complete ban on plastic carry bags in the town limits from September 16.

The district administration has chosen Moodbidri to start off with the implementation of plastic ban. With it, Moodbidri would stand as a model on plastic ban implementation in the district.

The ban has received positive response from the consumers and traders alike on the first day itself, except for a few people.

Some of the shop owners despite having the plastic carry bag stock in excess, have been distributing cloth bags. In fact, most of the shops are carrying a pamphlet insisting the customers to bring the carry bags with them and say no to plastic carry bags. As customers will have to pay an extra Rs 5 for one cloth bag, the customers prefer to bring carry bags from home.

The vegetable vendors have welcomed the ban with an open heart. M Anwar, a vegetable vendor in Moodbidri vegetable market, says that earlier he used to provide at least 1500 plastic bags a day each costing Rs 1, to the customers, but now it has stopped and most of the customers prefer to bring their own carry bags. “As we used to provide plastic bags free of cost earlier, we used to impose extra amount on the vegetable, but now we have cut down the vegetable price, benefitting us as well as the customers,” he said.

On the other hand, cloth shop owners have requested the TMC to extend the deadline as they have a large quantity of plastic bags already in store. The ban on the usage of all kind of plastic bags in TMC fish market has received criticisms.

“We assumed that only plastic carry bags with hands were banned in the fish market, but now that the Town Municipal Council has banned all varities of plastic bags, we are facing it difficult to supply fishes. Fishes can not be packed in cloth bags,” complained fish market contractor Rathnakar.