It was around five years ago that Krishnan Subramanian and Gauri Krishnan gave up their lucrative careers in the IT sector to do their bit for the promotion of an environment-friendly lifestyle.
The idea they chose revolved around popularising cloth bags, which had gradually been replaced by the now pervasive plastic bags. “For us, the cloth bag symbolises the principle of reuse. In my childhood, I have seen my family using the same cloth bag for many years, after which it gets used as a kitchen cloth before being thrown out and allowed to break down in the natural environment,” Mr. Krishnan said.
From making a couple of hundred cotton cloth bags in 2014, which were mostly distributed to friends and activists, the couple’s idea has now transformed into The Yellow Bag (or Manjapai), a self-sustaining business run from a modest house in the thickly populated lane of Mathichiyam in Madurai. The business provides direct employment to at least 50 women and supplies nearly 50,000 cloth bags a month, mostly shopping bags, to customers across India. “We are also grooming other like-minded people who want to get into manufacture of cloth bags,” Mr. Krishnan said.
Note of caution
As someone committed to environmental sustainability, he welcomes the proposed ban on single-use plastics in Tamil Nadu that takes effect on January 1, 2019, albeit with caution.
His concern partly stems from the need for the government to strengthen the ecosystem of small-scale industries that manufactures alternatives like cloth bags while enforcing the ban.
While The Yellow Bag was one of the first such initiatives to get into the manufacture and marketing of cloth bags, Mr. Krishnan says the ban on single-use plastics in recent years in States like Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra has attracted bigger companies into the manufacture of cloth bags.
“This is, in a way, needed and unavoidable as the market demands cloth bags in huge volumes at cheaper prices, comparable to the cost of a plastic bag,” he says.
“However, the downside is that the ideas of environment-friendliness and reuse are compromised. More importantly, the manufacturing is not labour-intensive,” he adds.
Labour intensive
For instance, he points out that the manufacturing process of The Yellow Bag is decentralised, with production predominantly done by women from their own households. “It generates more employment and the margin we pay to the women is far higher than what bigger manufacturing units pay,” Mr. Krishnan says.
Besides, a majority of the mass-produced cloth bags were in fact made of non-woven polymer-based materials, which may be better than plastic bags but are not completely biodegradable, he points out.
“Also, large units mainly cater to a market’s demand for complying with the government’s ban at the cheapest price. A popular supermarket chain openly demanded manufacturers like us supply bags with bare minimum quality. They are okay if the bags remain intact just for carrying items from the cash counter to a customer’s car. What happens to the idea of reuse then,” he asks. Arguing that a ban on plastics can be effective only if there is a mindset change on reuse, he says that the government must encourage small-scale industries to be part of this change. “The argument should not focus on providing cloth bags at a comparable price to plastic bags, but instead on the idea of reuse,” he stresses.
“One of the things the government can do is to encourage formation of clusters of small-scale industries with financial support, like Farmer Producer Organisations, which can then cater to increased demand while at the same time maintain quality and generate more employment,” Mr. Krishnan suggests.
“It is a welcome move that the government is now organising expos in all the districts for organisations like ours to showcase products. There should be more such support,” he adds.