300kg banned plastic seized from shops

Coimbatore: Officials of the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation seized 329.5kg of banned plastic bags from 1,063 commercial outlets at various parts of the city from Monday to Wednesday.
The officials seized 100kg of plastic items from 331 shops on Monday, 49kg from 294 shops on Tuesday and 180.5kg from 438 shops on Wednesday, and levied a fine of Rs 1.59lakh. They inspected bakeries, hotels, juice shops, rice mundis and milk merchants at places such as Gandhipuram, Trichy Road and Vadavalli.
While they had been conducting regular inspections at shops and penalising merchants for using the banned plastic items, they were not able to do it in the last few days as they were busy with the election work, an official said. “There had been complaints about shops freely using banned plastic bags. The latest seizure showed how shopkeepers were quick to use the banned products in absence of regular inspections,” an official said.
In January, right after the ban came into effect, corporation officials had inspected shops across the city and seized about 1,230kg of banned plastic items.