City Pulse

“Someone needed to do it. We decided to be that someone,” says 37-year-old Vignan Gowda.  Vignan, Business Excellence and Operations Manager with an IT company, belongs to that rare breed of citizens that do not believe in keeping calm and carrying on.  Perturbed by the massive roadblock that plastic bags were causing in smooth garbage disposal, this Sanjay Nagar resident and five of his friends started Rent A Bag (RAB) campaign. The project encourages shopkeepers to provide cotton bags instead of plastic to customers, thereby reducing the dependency on plastic bags.

Plastic, the main culprit:

“Every afternoon I would see autos carrying garbage overflowing with discarded plastic bags. These bags are extremely harmful for environment and also chock up landfills, thus generating massive garbage issues. This needed to be sorted out,” points out Vignan.  Merely acknowledging plastic to be the culprit, the team knew, would not help alleviate the problem. A cohesive solution was imperative.

Before embarking on the project, Vignan wanted to understand the reasons behind residents’ over reliance on polythene bags. “The oft repeated excuse was that they would forget to carry their own bags. I thought there was an urgent need to tackle this issue,” he adds. 

That’s when Vignan and five of his friends, all residents of Sanjay Nagar, brainstormed for a solution.  

The team soon invested Rs 17,000 from their pockets and bought 1,500 cotton bags. The next step involved identifying shops. The shopkeepers from these shops are given about 100 bags. When a customer fails to get a bag with them, the shopkeeper, for a deposit of Rs 10 or Rs 20, gives them a bag to carry their products. “The residents, later, give the bags back, and get their money refunded,” explains Vignan.  All the shops that were identified were given a yellow board that said bags were available so customers could identify them as RAB shops. 

“Our idea was to initially target the small shops and pushcart vegetable vendors. We identified 15 shops and told them our idea, they were more than willing to help out,” he says.  

This initiative, started December last year, is also beneficial for the shop keepers. “Usually they would spend anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 on buying polythene bags, but now under this project, they are saving all that money,” points out Vignan. 

Hiccups galore:

However, in spite of their best intentions, it was not an easy outing for the team. “It was not easy procuring so many bags and to make sure shopkeepers had enough for the customers. Sometimes residents would end up collecting two or three, sometimes more bags, and forget to return them,” Vignan adds. 

But the team didn’t let these minor hiccups deter them, and continued to overcome all obstacles. RAB’s future plans include distributing more than 30,000 bags among more shops. “We have approached various organisations like Lion’s club, Rotary Club and even Maruti Showroom for sponsorship,” adds Vignan. These organisations have helped out earlier as well by sponsoring some number of bags. “To cement this partnership, we are planning to add logo of the sponsors on the bags that we give to shopkeepers,” he says. 

Vignan points out to make the city healthier; a complete ban on plastic should be enforced and be strictly followed. “Plastic bags containing less than 40 microns shouldn’t be used. In our area we have BBMP officials inspecting shops and fining anyone using such thin plastic,” he adds. 

In just three months, RAB has been noticed across the city, with Vignan getting calls from various neighbourhoods seeking advice on launching similar campaigns. “I just hope many people replicate this model, and make their neighbourhoods cleaner,” says the man who dreams of making Sanjay Nagar, a plastic-free area. 

To contact Vignan, mail him at vignan.n@hotmail.com