Tripura: 3 Northeast airports identified as plastic-free airports

Agartala: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has declared altogether 85 airports across the country as single-use plastic free airport within a year and among them three are from the Northeast — Agartala, Guwahati and Imphal.

A press statement issued by the AAI informed, “As per the directions issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to beat plastic pollution, in first phase, 35 AAI Airports namely Agartala, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bagdogra, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Goa, Guwahati, Imphal, Indore, Jaipur, Jammu, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Mangalore, Patna, Port Blair, Pune, Raipur, Ranchi, Srinagar, Tiruchirappalli, Tirupati, Trivandrum, Udaipur, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada & Visakhapatnam had been declared ‘Single-Use Plastic Free Airport Terminals’ in January 2019.”

Various steps were undertaken by the AAI to eliminate the single-use plastic items at passenger terminals and city side of AAI Airports, making a total of 85 airports across India single-use plastic free zones. These steps include banning of single-use plastic items like straws, plastic cutleries, plastic plates etc and switching over to other packaging alternatives and replacements.

AAI has also enhanced its waste management systems and is promoting the use of eco-friendly sustainable alternatives progressively like use of bio-degradable garbage bags in the garbage bins and installation of plastic bottle crushing machine at airports.

“In its quest for making environmental conservation an ingrained organisational mission, Airports Authority of India has formulated an Environment Policy which envisages its commitment for reduction of Green House Gases (GHG) and sustainable development by implementing cost effective carbon mitigation action to conserve environment and reduce adverse impact on society, community and ecosystem thus contributing to national sustainable development goals,” the press statement added.