Dairies allowed to use plastic till 15th December

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE – Milk consumers in Maharashtra gets a sigh of relief as the government has agreed to take a compassionate view and allow the use of plastic pouches for packaging of milk until further notice.

On 11^th December, State Environment Minister, Ramdas Kadam, conducted a meeting with diaries representative of Maharashtra, dairy development and officials from the environment to resolve the ‘misunderstanding’ regarding the milk pouch issue.

In the meeting, he had asked plastic pouch manufacturers not to suspend their production as planned from December 15.

Earlier this year, Maharashtra’s plastic ban has become an issue for the dairies, as they were supposed to buy back the used pouches and send them to the manufacturers for processing. On which the dairies have complained about a low response from consumers as well as logistical problems with storage and transportation of used pouches.

Earlier in the month, the association had decided to suspend the sale of milk pouches once they ran out of stock, while the plastic pouch manufacturers had decided to suspend operations from December 15.

According to a report, Pune sells over 18 lakh litres of milk in pouches per day.

Apart from representatives of the milk dairies, the meeting was attended by the Minister for Dairy Development Mahadev Jankar, MoS for Environment Pravin Pote, MoS for Dairy Development Arjun Khotkar; Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil and NCP’s Ajit Pawar.

As per a notification issued by the department, milk dairies should use plastic bags not less than 50 microns in thickness for milk packaging as well as they should print a buyback price of not less than Rs 0.50 per pouch, to develop a buyback mechanism for recycling these pouches.

The official quoted, “Despite the lapse of the deadline, we were not insisting that milk dairies come up with a buyback mechanism considering the ongoing crisis in the sector.”