Waste reduced: Kadlekayi Parishe sees more paper, cloth bags

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru

The Kadlekayi Parishe this year has been less of a burden on mother nature. A collective effort by over 50 organisations in pushing the use of paper and cloth bags as alternatives to plastic, has evoked a welcome response from vendors and customers so far. The city hosted the Kadlekayi Parishe in Malleshwaram earlier this month while the peanut fair near the Bull Temple in Basavanagudi will conclude on Tuesday, November 26. G Nagaraj, also known as 'Plograj 'has been spearheading the initiative to make bags out of newspapers and old clothes, which can be reused.

It is learnt that a lot of vendors, coming from neighbouring states have been using plastic bags. The initiative, which was started last year, has seen a lot of improvement since then. “We’re happy to disclose that around 90,000 paper bags and more than 25,000 cloth bags were given away by us as part of this eco-friendly initiative,” Nagaraj added. He credits students from adjacent colleges for their volunteering efforts to promote the use of such bags at nominal prices. “We have divided the stretch into seven zones.

Volunteers will help restock these bags for vendors who run out of them,” Nagaraj said. Vendors were fearful of using plastic bags, and were relieved to get the alternatives like cloth bags at a price of Rs 2. “We couldn’t afford to get our hands on paper bags because of its cost. However, we are glad to see this initiative to help us and mother nature,” said Ganesh, a seller from Dharmapuri. It is learnt that the 120.45kgs of dry waste, which includes littered plastic and discarded water bottles have been collected from the fair for the last two days. This is a huge dip considering the tons of waste which was left behind in previous years.