Mumbai: Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), which runs India’s busiest airport, Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport, has announced that it will make the airport plastic-free by the end of 2019. On Tuesday, the DIAL said that the eco-friendly move is in line with Central government’s commitment to eliminate single-use plastic items from the country by 2022. Authorities are working collectively with stakeholders to ban all single use plastic at the airport.
Our objective is to make Delhi airport free from single-use plastic in line with the Prime Minister’s vision. Many initiatives have been taken towards environment protection and sustainable development. This would be another significant step towards achieving environmental sustainability at IGI airport, DIAL CEO Videh Jaipuriar told PTI.
In a statement issued, the organisation said that it will resort to numerous measures to ensure that plastic is shunned from the premises of airport.
It includes mainly creating awareness, enhancing waste management systems and promoting the use of eco-friendly sustainable alternatives… progressively. By the end of 2019, Delhi airport will become a plastic free airport, it said in a statement.
Items that will be prohibited inside the airport once alternatives are in place include grocery bags, food packaging, bottles, straws, containers, cups and cutlery. Considering that most of the food has plastic packaging, the airport authorities have already started to look for smart and bio-friendly packaging for takeaways. Likewise, all the retail outlets inside the airport will be asked to switch to bags that are made from environment friendly materials like cloth and paper.
The airport authorities are simultaneously taking steps to reduce overall waste generation through recycling and waste segregation. IGI airport has already installed blue and green bins for biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste respectively.
The IGI airport isn’t the first airport in India to take an action against plastic. Last year in November, Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), installed waste recycling machines. The machines were installed to prevent plastic from going to the landfills. The installed machines crush plastic PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, steel/aluminium cans and plastic bags in an eco-friendly way. Passengers get an option to either make a donation or claim a discount coupon in return for submitting their empty plastic water bottles/bags/metal cans into the crushing machine.
Also Read: Fly Free: Coming Soon, Sanitary Napkin Vending Machines At Airports In India
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies.
