That did not stop 67,000 plastics professionals from convening here last week for Plastindia 2009, a five-day celebration of all things plastic. The trade show was billed as the second-largest plastics convention in the world. (The first, K Fair, is in Germany.)
Businessmen and a few businesswomen came from around the world to look at extruders and polymer additives, printing machines and blown film. They attended seminars on differentiated packaging solutions with advanced technology resins and polyolefin, the changing face of the plastic industry.
And whenever they could, they complained about what they considered the unfair prejudice against the plastic bag.
Politicians have gone overboard, said Arvind M. Mehta, president of the Plastindia Foundation, the trade group sponsoring the conference. Our industry is facing a problem and we have to fight.
Seated in a makeshift office of four plastic walls behind a faux-wood plastic desk at the convention, Mr. Mehta repeated a line similar to one used by pro-gun groups in the United States: it is not the plastic bag that causes the problems, he said, it is the person who uses it.
Globally, about 100 billion plastic bags are sold a year, according to the Film and Bag Federation (www.plasticbag.com), a unit of a United States plastics trade group.
Most American cities have shelved plans to ban bags outright as San Francisco has or tax them as Ireland did, thanks in part to strong lobbying by industry groups.
But the no plastic bags mantra continues to echo worldwide, with big retailers pledging to cut back and consumers (even those who persist in more environmentally harmful activities like frequent air travel) opting for paper and canvas carry bags instead. In New Delhi, many consumers and shopkeepers, perhaps spooked by the possible jail time, have been assiduously avoiding plastic in recent weeks, using everything from cardboard boxes to baskets instead.
In some countries, like South Africa and China, the thinnest plastic bags have been banned in favor of thicker, reusable plastic bags, and recycling of old bags into new ones is being encouraged.
But Plastindia conference attendees, many of whom are the second- or third-generation owners of plastics businesses, say there is no real substitute in some cases for the plastic bag.
Put a man outside with a paper bag, let it start raining, said Ridwaan Arbee, who runs Pak Plastics, a South African manufacturer of Quality Candy Striped and Plain and Printed Vest Type bags, a business he purchased from his father. When the rain hits the paper, everything falls out, he said.
Mr. Arbee said governments should be encouraging recycling rather than banning bags. He said that of the 350 tons of plastic bags he makes a year, 250 tons are made from recycled material.
Eliminate plastic wrapping in favor of paper and you risk halting the wheels of commerce, some bag makers said. Plastic is visible, transparent, said Harpal Singh, the chairman of Sangeeta Poly Pack, a Mumbai polypropylene manufacturer.
We are very much in fear of the New Delhi ban, said Anuj Jain, managing director of Sun Polybag, which displayed bags in its booths holding goods from potato chips to womens underwear. If the government ban holds, Mr. Jain wondered, how would manufacturers avoid getting dust on their goods?
More important, Mr. Singh estimated, plastic bag manufacturing alone employs about a million people in India.
The country is among the 10 largest makers of plastic products, and executives here predict it will grow to be the third-largest consumer of plastic goods by 2010, behind the United States and China, as Indian consumers start using more plastic and packaged goods.
But even plastic executives concede that bags longevity standard plastic bags take hundreds of years to degrade, while biodegradable bags are expensive does make them environmentally unfriendly. The head of Plastindia has a solution for that, too. Western countries should find a way to convert them back to oil, Mr. Mehta said.
Just in case they do not, the foundation simultaneously hosted in New Delhi a pan-Asian plastics recycling conference and meetings between Chinese, Indian and American plastic executives.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/business/worldbusiness/17bag.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss