With application forms tucked beneath their arms and marklists peeping out of the folders, those who buy banana fry and vada from the Kerala University canteen have more than just a curious smile on their face, they have a paper bag to take back home. Abdul Gafoor, an employee at the canteen, carefully places the oily snacks inside newspaper bags and passes them to the customers. It is two months since the university canteen has become plastic-free, thanks to the Centre for Gandhian Studies who have been supplying paper bags for free.
The Centre for Gandhian Studies building is a five-minute walk from the University canteen. Cross the puddles and the overgrown weed to reach the building that is home not just to Gandhian principles, but also to colourful paper bags. A coffin-sized room has been set aside for these bags. Stacked in man-sized piles, there are cloth-pasted paper bags and newspaper bags.
Twenty-four-year-old Shyam M, is an Interior Design student at the CAD centre, Kesavadasapuram. His evenings are not spent sweating in playgrounds or dillydallying on theatre premises nor sipping Iced Eskimo at Coffee Day. Instead, sitting on the floor of their drawing room, with newspapers, scissors, and old cloth pieces spread around, Syam and his mother fashion paper bags as they yap about the day’s events. For Mehja K, a housewife settled in Poonthura, there is no particular time for making these bags. As soon as she is done with the cooking, washing and mopping, she cuts, pastes and stitches the bags. “In a week, I used to make 100 cloth bags and 100 newspaper bags but these days due to the rain, they take time to dry,” she says.
It was a year back, when the Swadeshi Grama Vikasana Kendra conducted a paper bag making class that along with a hundred others, Mehja and Shyam learned to make these paper wonders. “Most of the people learned it for a hobby and not for a living. We were planning to make the MLA hostel canteen and the university college canteen also plastic-free but there is a shortage of working hands,” says Raheem, director, Centre for Gandhian Studies.
Those who have fallen sick or visited their ailing folks or friends at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital recently, might have noticed the change, the anti-plastic makeover. “We have also been planning to open a counter at the entrance from where people can avail paper bags. But we cannot expect patients to spend on these bags. Initially, till there is some acceptance, we have to give it free of cost and that is the biggest hurdle; fishing for sponsors,” says Viswanathan K.V, Casualty Superintendent, Medical College Hospital.
Not just the public sector, there are a few environment lovers who do their fraction without aiming for any publicity. Make your way to Modern Times, a watch shop at the Saphalyam Complex, Palayam and be it Fastrack or Titan, the watch you buy will be nestled inside a pretty cloth bag with floral prints or kaleidoscopic patterns.
The city is going anti-plastic. Or at least trying to. Though humungous black garbage bags adorn the alleys, gutters stream with filth and the puddles and potholes are deep enough to drown The Hulk, there are but a few people who wish to rule out the plastic in the sewer. Paperman, an NGO aiming to recycle paper, is in high spirits this monsoon.
“There is a huge demand-supply gap in the paper bag market. We are trying to bridge it in our own way. We collect newspapers, answersheets and used notebooks from schools and send it to a recycling unit in Sivakasi,” says Gopikrishnan Nair, one of the founder members of the group.
Schools, colleges and hospitals done, even the Padmanabha Swamy Temple is in talks
with Paperman to go anti-plastic!
