Chandigarh, March 27: Today, the Climate Change Centre of Department of Environment, Chandigarh Administration, Chandigarh Beopar Mandal & Yuvsatta-NGO organized a meeting on issues of ‘Single Use Plastic Free Chandigarh’ for representatives of over 60 prominent market welfare associations of the city at Hotel Metro, Sector 35, Chandigarh.

Sh. Debendra Dalai, CCF cum Director, Department of Environment, CEO, CREST, Chandigarh Administration and was the chief guest on the occasion. And prominent amongst those who participated includes S. Charanjiv Singh, President and Shri Anil Vohra, Patron, Chandigarh Beopar Mandal, Dr. Brij Bhushan, Scientist D, Department of Environment, Mr. Sukhwinder Singh, Project Director, CREST and Mr. Pramod Sharma, founder of Yuvsatta-NGO.

In his welcome address Sh. Anil Vohra said that as active citizens of the city, all their members believe in following rules and guidelines laid down by the Government of India for smooth conduct of business, caring for the customer and genuine environmental concerns.

S. Charanjiv Singh, President of Chandigarh Beopar Mandal decried the practice of selling to shopkeeper’s polythene carry-bags with fake ‘approved’ stamps, for which the shopkeepers get hefty challans for no fault of theirs. .

Addressing the traders Sh. Debendra Dalai shared that Chandigarh was the first city in India to bring out a notification banning single use plastic bags. And now as the Government of India has put a nationwide ban on single-use plastic items, still it’s found that wrapping or packaging films around boxes, invitation cards, use of single-use poly-bags, even ball-pens, gel-pens, cups, straws are rampantly used. He advocated that people should lead by self-examples and become role-models for others with their environmental consciousness and actions.

Further, Mr. Dalai also suggested Chandigarh Beopar Mandal managing body members to identify one of their representatives in each market who can become their ‘Green Chandigarh Ambassador’ and work as change-maker in motivating other shopkeepers and their customer to adopt a environment friendly behaviour and habbits, like using cloth, jute bags, buying from nearby markets this saving unnecessary fuel, walking or using cycles for short distance, using renewable energy. Our larger objective is to make ‘Chandigarh a Carbon Neutral City by 2030’.

And as the first step towards ‘GO GREEN CHANDIGARH’, the programme ended with handing over fountain pens to main office bearers of Chandigarh Beopar Mandal by Sh. Debendra Dalai.

"It's time now to say bye-bye poly bags and disposable pens plus discard use of all kinds of single use plastics from our life. Otherwise presently we’re seeing animals dying because of plastic consumption and that day is not far when humans will also face the same fate"Parmod Sharma.