Thiruvananthapuram: State-run Beverages Corporation (Bevco) is grappling with a unique problem of its own making – littering of used bottles, mostly plastic ones which is adding to the mounting waste issue. Plastic bottles are used for the packing of 90 per cent of the liquor sold by Bevco, the sole agency entrusted with liquor sales in Kerala.
Bevco is now planning to tap the Haritha Karma Sena’s (HKS) network to tackle the littering of empty plastic bottles. It plans to allocate a portion of CSR funds at its disposal to the HKS. It also plans to collect a fee from liquor manufacturers, who are supposed to collect the plastic bottles they sell and treat it for use in various purposes. Bevco plans to hold talks with HKS and distillery associations on this.
Earlier, Bevco had entrusted the task of collecting used plastic bottles of liquor, to Clean Kerala. But after liquor producers withdrew from it, the project was shelved.
The second Pinarayi government's first liquor policy had ruled that the state wouldn’t allow the sale of liquor in plastic bottles. But liquor manufacturers had opposed this citing that Kerala was not producing glass bottles and hence the costs would soar if bottles are brought from other states.
The state had directed that full bottle of liquor (750 ml) should be in glass bottles, but manufacturers dodged this by bringing out bottles below the 750 ml criterion. After the Local Self Government (LSG) department took up solid waste disposal as a key agenda, procuring empty bottles has come back as a focus area. As excise and LSG departments are under one ministry, HKS can be used for waste management without many hurdles. The idea now is to entrust HKS with the task of collecting empty bottles and transferring them to Clean Kerala.
Tamil Nadu is proposing to collect the empty bottles through liquor shops, wherein each bottle will be charged an extra Rs 10, which will be reimbursed when the bottle is given back to the vendor.
The details of the process of collecting empty bottles in Kerala are yet to be figured out.