‘25 per cent drop in home deliveries’: Hotels claim plastic ban hurt them

CHENNAI: The ban on single-use plastics, which came into effect on January 1, has expectedly not gone down well with the hoteliers. The Tamil Nadu Hotel Association (TNHA) claims that the implementation of the ban has led to a 25 per cent drop in home delivery orders.

Venakda Subbu, president of TNHA said, “Food parcels and takeaways account for at least 30 per cent of our business and the plastic ban order has affected that badly. Hotels are seeing at least 25-30 per cent dip in such home delivery orders.”

Subbu claimed that due to unavailability of cost-effective and sufficient quantity of eco-friendly products to pack food, especially liquid items, hotels are not able to provide home delivery orders. “Some hotels have started using bags made of cloth, corn starch and reusable plastic containers to supply food parcels. But customers are not ready to pay the additional expenses for these bags and are cancelling orders,” claimed Subbu.

At least one lakh eateries, restaurants and mid-size hotels across the State come under the purview of the TNHA.The hotel owners have also seconded the opinion of the TNHA. “Prior to the plastic ban, we used to receive at least 50 takeaway orders per day. But now the orders have reduced to 30,” said V Rajendran , a restaurant owner in Velachery.

To deal with the ban order, the hotel-owners have started using paper bags, cloth, jute bags and even cardboard boxes for packaging of food items but they are facing problem as the eco-friendly bags are not available aplenty.

“There is a huge gap between demand and supply of these eco-friendly bags. Hence we have started making packets with newspapers,” said Rashid Khan, owner of a biriyani joint in the city. 
M Ravi, president of Chennai Hotels’ Association, claimed that they are forced to charge extra for the packaging. 

“The hike was inevitable as hotels will be providing recyclable plastic containers which cost more. Our industry is badly affected by the ban order,” concluded Ravi. However, there are no independent assessments yet on how the ban has affected businesses.