A BMC poster that urges people to shun polythene bags. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 24: Local Self Government Day is a little over a month away and the civic body has once again woken up to the nuisance of polythene.

It won’t be just raids this time, after last year’s drive fizzled out due to want of continuous monitoring.

This time, the municipal corporation plans awareness campaigns against the use of polythene in the city along with a series of raids on agencies selling plastic bags that violate specifications.

According to the specifications issued by the Union ministry of environment and forests, polythene bags of less than 40-micron thickness are dangerous for the environment.

The awareness campaign will start on August 1 and continue till August 31. It will be part of the programmes to be rolled out before Local Self Government Day on August 31.

The corporation has already designed 10 types of banners, which will be pasted at prominent locations. Miniature prints of the big banners in the form of posters, leaflets and cards will also be distributed through newspaper hawkers, shopkeepers and cash counters at malls and shopping centres.

Municipal commissioner Sanjib Kumar Mishra said: “In one of the posters, a little girl asks her father why he is not taking a bag to the market. This was the practice almost a decade ago and we want people to revert to it.”

The civic body has also decided to paste posters on city buses. City environment officer Bikram Keshari Routray said: “Last year, corporation officials in teams conducted raids almost four times every month to seize polythene bags that did not adhere to environment ministry specifications. In a single raid, 15kg to 20kg of polythene materials were seized from various parts of the city.”

Routray said the corporation was unable to carry out such raids this year due to the shortage of staff. “We will start the drive again following a meeting on plans to celebrate the Local Self Government Day,” he said.

Mrutyunjay Tripathy, a resident of Soubhagya Nagar Phase II, said: “The corporation authorities should learn a lesson from their Cuttack counterparts. Use of polythene has almost been banned in many parts of Cuttack.”