madurai for p karthik sarathy an idiappam seller from near madurai the shop near lady doak college was a recent venture in moneymaking with about 80 to 100 customers buying food parcels every day he began making a brisk business with the new enterprisebut a few months ago the district administration and corporation imposed a ban on plastic carry bags with this his business took a nosedive i even received a warning from corporation officials against using plastic carry bags said the 32yearold sellerwhen plastic carry bags were not banned i bought them for rs 120 and they could be used for five days but when i switched to nonwoven carry bags i had to shell out rs 240 every day spending rs 7200 a month is equal to a labourers wage he saidkarthik then encouraged customers to bring own bags or vessels to shop and succeeded in doing so about 35 of them now take their own bags to the shop he said it was not economical viable to give a cloth bag free with a food parcel i lost rs 2 for each food parcel costing rs 10 or rs 20he said that the price of nonwoven bags have increased due to the rising demand i politely advised a customer to reuse the cloth bag i gave him one day he took offence at that and that was the last time i saw of him he saidhe set a couple of printouts stating that the corporation has banned plastic carry bags and they would have to pay rs 2 extra to get a nonwoven carry bag now around 30 out of my 80 parcel customers 37 per cent bring their own bags to collect the parcel i started offering a little extra gravy and one or two more idiappam to those who brought vessels to buy food and this worked he added