SHUNNED ITEM: With the ban on plastic carrybags being implemented, shopkeepers are switching to paper packets. A Telegraph picture

The next time you go to the market, don’t be surprised if the fish-seller wraps your hilsa in a strip of newspaper and hands it over. With the over 40-micron rule for plastic carrybags being strictly implemented, shopkeepers are going back to paper packets.

“Police mean business this time,” said a meat-seller on Cornfield Road, who has been wrapping his ware in sal leaves and newspaper. “If the officers spot a shop using plastic carrybags, they are slapping a Rs-1,000 fine straight away.”

He added that his customers were finding it inconvenient to carry the meat but were not complaining. The scene was the same in shops in most parts of Calcutta, including Gariahat, Jadavpur, Belgachhia, Salt Lake and Baguiati.

According to a pollution control board rule, effective from June 5 this year, use of plastic carrybags of thickness less than 40 micron is banned across the state. In the coastal areas, forests and hills, there’s a ban on plastic packets of any kind. The blanket ban also covers 40 heritage sites.

While a packet of 70 plastic carrybags below 40-micron thickness costs Rs 10, a packet of the same number of bags of the sanctioned variety comes for Rs 100.

“A 40-micron polybag costs about Rs 1.50, which is 10 per cent of a Rs 15 bill. We can give 40-micron plastic packets only to customers who make bulk purchases. We have started giving brown paper thongas, worth 25 paise, to the other customers. They get irritated when they have to carry more than one packet,” said Prasenjit Sil, owner of Kalpataru, a sweet shop in CA Market in Salt Lake.

A salesperson at Salt Lake’s Seva Medical Shop said a pharmaceutical company has distributed paper carrybags to many medicine shops. “We were given 3,000 packets,” he said, adding that the shop would switch to the common thonga once it runs out of the free packets.

The plastic packet manufacturers are understandably crying foul over the clampdown. “The two crore people linked with the industry will lose their livelihood. It’s surprising that the authorities are not showing the same urgency towards gutkha and potato chips packets ,which are not even recyclable,” said Mohammad Sharik Shamsi of Plastic Carry Bag Merchants’ Association.

Biswajit Mukherjee, a senior law officer of the environment department, said that the state-level plastic management committee felt a sustained drive was needed to eradicate the problem. There is provision of a fine up to Rs 1 lakh or imprisonment up to five years for flouting the ban, he added.