Tagore Garden market “plastic-free”, declares SDMC

NEW DELHI: Tagore Garden’s fruit and vegetable market is ‘plastic-free’, declares the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) on Monday, September 23.

The corporation said in a statement that it will identify 20 other markets, five in each of its four zones, to be declared as plastic-free by October 2. Bhupendra Gupta, Chairman of the Standing Committee, said that effective mass awareness programmes and with support of the market association and the shopkeepers has led to achieve this status. “Our first aim was to convince small shopkeepers to be the part of single-use plastic ban campaign,” said Gupta.

Rajiv Jain, senior official of the environment department said, to reduce dependence on polythene bags, awareness campaigns on the ill effects of plastic use were carried out involving customers and shopkeepers. Also, the SDMC partnered with an NGO to provide cloth bags, which were distributed to shopkeepers to give to customers who did not get their own bags.

All the three municipal corporations of Delhi have been carrying out intensive drives to stop the use of single-use plastic following the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech.