Ban on 19 items comes in on Friday, but researchers warn that millions are not prepared to use alternatives to ubiquitous plastic

O n Friday India’s nationwide ban on single-use plastic comes into effect, but a glance at the street vendors who line one road in the Indian capital selling coconut water, flowers, samosas, mangoes and ice-cream – each in their own plastic bag – reveals that few are ready.

Faimudin Ahmed, who sells mangoes piled high on a cart, says plastic bags cost him 40 rupees for 250 grams. The cost of paper bags is double that.

“Even if I could afford the extra cost of paper bags, they won’t take the weight of two kilos of mangoes. They will break. The only way the ban will work is if customers bring their own cloth bags,” said Ahmed.

His neighbour, Akash Ram, says paper straws for his coconut water cost five times as much and doubts if customers will accept such a big price hike. “I can’t afford to lose business. As it is, all I manage to do is feed my family and nothing else,” said Ram.

Some customers said it was too drastic and more time should be given to people to get used to the idea. Others were more accepting. ‘It’s not just me who is going to be paying more for the street food I buy. It’s everyone. So it’s OK,” said one auto rickshaw driver.

A public that is not yet ready to shop with their own bags, vendors and shopkeepers who have not been provided with alternatives, and the prospect of daily transactions becoming complicated are just some of the problems India faces with the plastic ban.

Nineteen items are covered by the ban, including plastic cups, cutlery, ice-cream sticks, earbuds, straws and wrapping. Thousands of other items will remain ubiquitous but for many environmentalists, it is a start.

India’s data on its plastic generation is opaque. In 2015, government statistics said the country generated 9.5m tonnes of plastic waste annually, but nonprofit research organisation the Centre for Science and Environment believes the figure was a gross underestimate.

The government also claims that 60% of plastic waste is recycled, but a survey by the centre in 2019 found the figure was 12%.

Anyone found using single-use plastic will run the risk of a five-year jail sentence or a fine of 100,000 rupees (£1,034) or both. Street vendors interviewed by the Guardian, however, just laughed at the idea.

“Since it takes me about eight months to earn that much, they will be wasting their time fining me,” said Ram.

Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh, programme manager at the Centre for Science and Environment, appreciates the difficulties for street vendors, the poor and the companies manufacturing plastic bags that now either face losses or closure unless they can manufacture alternatives.

“Such a massive transition is not going to be possible for small manufacturers and small vendors without support from the government and the plastics industry, nor without educating the public to change their behaviour,” said Singh.

Some of the behaviour changes include taking cloth bags to shop for groceries and food containers for carrying food.

One criticism of the ban is that alternatives are not available. Guidelines issued by the Central Pollution Control Board mention cotton and jute bags, bamboo straws, cups, cutlery, clay cups and biodegradable glass.

But there are fears there is not enough supply. The Delhi government is holding a trade fair on 1 July where people making alternative packaging will showcase their goods, but it’s not clear how production can be ramped up to feed the needs of the country of 1.3 billion.

Here and there, people are ready. A well-known sweetshop in New Delhi is switching to paper from cellophane for wrapping boxes of confectionary.

Virendra Sharma, a flower seller, points to the pile of paper sheets near his sunflowers. “I am keeping paper as well as cellophane for wrapping flowers, but the problem is that customers insist on cellophane saying it looks smarter,” said Sharma.

Packaging company UFlex is going to start manufacturing 6bn paper straws annually to cater to the demand of the fast-moving consumer goods industry, which uses them for its packs of juice, milk and coffee.

Singh believes the plastics industry has been far too slow to prepare for the transition because it didn’t take the prospect of a ban seriously.

Initially, the Narendra Modi government planned for a ban in 2020, but it was postponed to give the industry more time to prepare. Even now, many companies that use plastic straws are urging the government to extend the deadline again by three months.

“By now the industry should have … prepared itself and been ready to support small entrepreneurs in switching to alternatives. Everyone has to start in real earnest now,” said Singh.