The Madras High Court on Friday asked Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) Managing Director to appear before it on June 24 to ascertain why the liquor bottle buy back scheme, which had led to return of around 80,000 glass bottles every day in the Nilgiris district, should not be extended across the State.
A Special Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, constituted to hear forest-related cases, said, the scheme could prove beneficial for the people at large and prevent littering of empty glass bottles in agricultural fields, government school campuses and other such places.
In April, the High Court had directed Tasmac to introduce such a scheme in the Nilgiris to prevent injuries to wild animals. It allowed the corporation to collect ₹10 more than the Maximum Retail Price for every bottle sold in the hill station and refund the money when the bottle gets returned.
Justice Kumar said the Nilgiris Collector told him that around 80,000 bottles were getting returned every day after the scheme was introduced on May 15.
The Collector also stated that 33 tonnes of littered glass bottles were recovered from the forests during a five-day drive carried out in the district.
“If such a huge quantity of glass bottles are littered in one small district, imagine the enormous number across the State,” the judge said and insisted that the scheme should be extended across the State after implementing it in other hill stations as well as around sanctuaries and national parks from June 15 as already ordered by the court.
Justice Chakravarthy said, the corporation could even create some jobs by engaging a workforce to remove the labels from the returned bottles and clean them before reuse. He said the menace of the such glass bottles was very high and no one could now dare to step into agricultural fields barefoot.
