So now we have to pay Rs. 5 for the bag too?

Tuesday, 4 November 2025 00:15 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

A closer look at how “eco-friendly” turned into a business model

When “eco” turns into an economy!

From 1 November 2025, Sri Lankans will pay Rs. 3-5 for a simple polythene bag. The message is clear: be eco-friendly, carry your own. The reality is more complicated: eco has quietly become an economy.

For some, “eco” is a cause.

For others, it is a career.

For a growing few, it is a business model built on guilt, premiums, and headlines.

The hidden price of going green

At first glance, the policy sounds logical. Polythene harms the planet, so charging for it might discourage use. But who really gains when a bag that costs a few cents to produce is sold for Rs. 3–5? Supermarkets, manufacturers, and intermediaries pocket the margin, while the consumer pays the guilt-fee. Multiply that by millions of daily transactions and “saving the planet” becomes a tidy revenue stream.

The practical problem nobody talks about

In theory, we should all carry reusable bags. In practice, life is messy. You do not carry a shopping bag to a wedding, a meeting, or a school event. On your way home you stop at a grocery store for milk and vegetables... Are we expected to keep a cloth bag in every car, handbag, backpack, and pocket? These ideas sound neat on policy papers but crumble in daily life. Behaviourally, when convenience clashes with conscience, convenience almost always wins. That is not a moral failure; it is how the brain weighs effort and reward.

Good intentions, wrong directions?

Some may say, “We have to start from somewhere.” True, but a step in the wrong direction still moves us away from the goal. Bans and taxes without affordable alternatives do not solve problems; they shift the burden to ordinary people. If environmental reform is meant to help the planet, it must also be practical, fair, and inclusive. Not just symbolic.

The “eco” paradox

Walk into any supermarket and you will see eco labels everywhere: paper straws, glass bottles, cloth totes, “biodegradable” boxes... nearly all priced higher. Eco has become a status symbol. It lets brands charge premiums while customers get a small moral dopamine hit. But when you examine the numbers, plastic still has no cheaper or better rival for many everyday uses.

Plastic needs far less energy to make than glass or paper.
A PET bottle weighs around one twentieth of a glass bottle, which means significant fuel savings in transport.
Paper bags, meanwhile, typically require more water and energy to produce and generate higher emissions than thin polythene

The optics are green, the arithmetic is not.

PET vs. glass – the price of perception

Consider bottled beverages. A juice in PET might sell at Rs. 180. Repackage the same juice in glass and watch the price jump to Rs. 400 or more. Why? Because it looks eco and premium. Yet most of those glass bottles are not collected or refilled in Sri Lanka at scale; they end up in landfills, where they take centuries to degrade. Meanwhile, a closed loop PET system can recover a large share of bottles using far less energy than producing, transporting, and discarding glass. Which, then, is truly sustainable? Lightweight PET with robust collection, or heavy glass with a higher price and a higher footprint per trip?

True sustainability does not mean replacing plastic with materials that are costlier, heavier, or water intensive. It means re-engineering systems so the lightest, most efficient materials are captured and cycled. Reward companies that design for recycling and prove recovery rates. Expand buy back points in neighbourhoods. Support waste to value projects that turn post-consumer plastic into roads, tiles, or fuel. Publish dashboards so citizens can see what last month’s collections became. Visible feedback turns reluctant compliance into proud participation

Paper straw vs. plastic straw – the cost that doubles

The paper straw is a textbook case of sentiment over sense. On a hot day, or if you sip slowly, the paper straw softens and collapses before you finish. You ask for another. The cost just doubled, and the resources did too. Two straws, two wrappers, two supply chain journeys, only to deliver a worse experience. Multiply that across cafés and cinemas, and the “eco” choice quietly becomes a resource heavy choice with a premium price tag. The plastic straw, by contrast, does its job reliably at a fraction of the cost and also with a lower carbon footprint.

The vehicle accident analogy

If road accidents rise, we do not ban vehicles or charge a fee to discourage vehicles from entering the roads to reduce accidents. We improve roads, train drivers, and enforce rules. Environmental policy should follow the same logic: fix systems, not just products. Instead of innovating collection, sorting, and reuse, we ban and tax the most visible items because that makes for easy press releases. It is like blaming the driver for the potholes.

Who profits from the Rs. 3-5 bag?

The bag levy is often marketed as moral progress. In reality, it transfers value from consumers to retailers and suppliers unless it is transparently ring fenced for waste management. If every rupee collected funded visible, audited recycling upgrades bins, balers, buy back centres, the public would see the point and support it. Without that, the charge feels like a small, daily penalty on ordinary life.

When “eco” becomes a career

An entire industry now profits from saving the planet: consultants, lobbyists, certifiers, workshop organisers, campaign agencies. That does not make them villains. It does explain why the narrative often favours visible, premium, consumer side fixes over tougher, upstream engineering. If the planet were magically fixed tomorrow, how many eco jobs would still exist? The question itself is revealing.

Plastic, paper, and the emotions of guilt

The war on plastic is also a war in the mind. Behavioural neuroscience calls it moral licensing: buy an eco-labelled product and the brain rewards you with dopamine. That is why people proudly accept a paper bag or paper straw even when the experience is worse and the total resources multiply. Eco has become a comfort product for the conscience. The feeling can be real even when the impact is small.

What a better solution looks like

True sustainability does not mean replacing plastic with materials that are costlier, heavier, or water intensive. It means re-engineering systems so the lightest, most efficient materials are captured and cycled. Reward companies that design for recycling and prove recovery rates. Expand buy back points in neighbourhoods. Support waste to value projects that turn post-consumer plastic into roads, tiles, or fuel. Publish dashboards so citizens can see what last month’s collections became. Visible feedback turns reluctant compliance into proud participation.

Start from somewhere... Start with systems

Yes, we should start from somewhere. Start with systems we can scale: collection, segregation, local processing, and market incentives. Start by ring fencing the bag charge for audited recycling infrastructure, not as a quiet markup. Start by aligning convenience with conscience so the brain does not have to choose between what feels right and what fits real life.

The way forward

Plastic pollution is real. Pretending that expensive alternatives fix it is wishful thinking.

At this moment, there is no better, cheaper, or more practical substitute for plastic for many everyday uses.

We do not fix accidents by banning cars; we fix the system around them. Likewise, we will not save the planet by banning polythene bags while selling imported glass bottles at triple the price and calling it eco. Real change will come when eco is efficient, affordable, and convenient. When it becomes the default choice rather than a luxury statement.

(The writer is a strategic thinker and technology-driven innovator who bridges business insight with behavioural science to help individuals and organisations achieve measurable and meaningful growth.)

So now we have to pay Rs. 5 for the bag too?

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