Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA), the largest knitwear/readymade garments cluster in India, has appealed to the Tamil Nadu government not to ban polybags supplied to garment units as the decision may hit the exporters’ business in a big way.
Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA), the largest knitwear/readymade garments cluster in India, has appealed to the Tamil Nadu government not to ban polybags supplied to garment units as the decision may hit the exporters’ business in a big way. The state government has, on June 25, issued an order banning the ‘use and throwaway plastics’ from January 1, 2019.
While welcoming the state government’s decision to ban usage of plastics from January next year, the association noted that in the banned plastic items’ list, the polybag used for packing of the garments to the exports as well as in the domestic markets has also been included. This would cause a big impact on the garment manufacturing units.
In his appeal to the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, TEA president Raja M Shanmugham said the point of contention is that the garment industry would totally come to a standstill as they don’t have any other alternative for packing of the garments. Moreover, there will also be a cascading effect on downstream activities of garment sector.
According to him, in the garment sector, the polybag is used for packing of each and every garment and these polybags are recycled. More importantly, as there are no environmental issues in the usage of polybag, the environment conscious countries are also insisting to use polybags for packing garments.
Referring an importers specification, Shanmugham said that one of the overseas importers has given a polybag specification mentioning that individual garment polybag shrouding should be made from minimum 20 micron (80 gauge) LDPE (low-density polyethylene) and master (set) or ‘blister’ polybag shrouding should be made from minimum 25 micron (100 gauge) LDPE.

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