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Can Retailers Charge You for Carry Bags?
Over the years, several consumer courts have ruled that retailers can't charge customers for carry bags.
However, retailers argue that no law bans them from doing so. We take a look.
The roots of the problem go back to 2011, when the Centre brought out the Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules which mandated that “no carry bags shall be made available free of cost by retailers to consumers”. Carry bags in this case meant plastic bags, and the rule was meant to curb the use of plastic bags.
Retailers, however, exploited this rule and started charging for paper and cloth bags as well, which was not explicitly mentioned in the rules. Moreover, civic bodies had to determine the price of the plastic carry bags first, taking into consideration the cost of inputs and the cost of waste management. But this didn’t happen.

Noticing that retailers were charging for paper bags and civic bodies had failed to fix the cost of carry bags, the Union government amended these rules in 2016. It introduced a new section called “Explicit pricing of carry bags”, which asked retailers selling plastic bags to pay a certain amount as a plastic waste management fee and also to put up notices in outlets stating that plastic bags would be provided only on payment. However, even this didn’t work.
The government brought another amendment in 2018 which altogether omitted the 2016 section. The new rules didn’t mention anything about the pricing of carry bags and, like previous rules, didn’t say anything specific about paper carry bags.
So can retailers legally charge customers for carry bags? Yes, they can but several consumer courts have held that charging consumers for bags without informing them beforehand is illegal.
For instance, in the recent Lifestyle case, the consumer court in Delhi held that providing information about carry bag charges during the payment process causes harassment to the customer. It also affects the consumer’s right to make an informed decision to opt for a specific outlet or not, the court added.
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