Sikkim is a northeast region of India located at the foot of the Himalayan mountains near the borders of Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. Sikkim is home to a small town called Lachen who officially banned the use of all plastic water bottles in 2011 and followed that by banning all plastic carry bags in 2018.
Lachen has now announced they are introducing bamboo water bottles to the area, as an environmentally safe alternative.
Located at 2,750 meters or just over 9,000 feet, Lachen attracts nearly 100,000 tourists every year and is known for its snowcapped mountains and aquamarine lakes that outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers alike enjoy.
Over the past 10-15 years, the town has seen a drastic increase in their number of tourists, with 30 new hotels built during that time. With the number of tourists increasing so has the amount of plastic bottles and pollution.
The locals decided they didn’t want their town to be full of pollution, so they led the initiative to ban plastic. As reported last year, this is one of the most successful plastic bans due to the locals who care, everyone from taxi drivers to guest house owners, holding people accountable for any plastic someone may sneak in.
Chewang Lachenpa, former Lachen Tourism Development Committee (LTDC) team member, talks about how they achieved success:
We were in charge of preserving both our cultural heritage and our natural surroundings. When we first started, we didn’t know how to manage waste and found that most of it was being dumped in our rivers and forests and that 60 percent of it was packaged drinking water. Now, if we find visiting tourists carrying these plastic bottles, the driver accompanying them, usually a local, is fined. It is Rs 500 for a first offense, Rs 1,000 for a second and Rs 2,000 for a third. The fine can go up further for repeat offenders.
As the next step, they are now ready to begin a bamboo water bottle implementation. Local Lachen authorities have ordered 1,000 bamboo water bottles, but this is just to get things started.
Lachen reached out to the World Wide Fund for Nature and a local organization known as the Dzumsa for assistance. The Dzumsa has provided each homestay, hotel, and commercial outlet filters for their water. As one local, Gyatso Lachenpa, points out, the water is straight from the mountains; “The water provided is from Sikkim’s rivers and springs, which are much healthier. We had the water in the area tested in labs,” says Gyatso.
The bamboo bottles will be introduced at the Lachen Losar festival later this year.
This small town in Sikkim, India saw a growing problem and decided to act on it, rather than wait for someone else to step in and change things. They prove that even though things take time, small changes can eventually lead to a lasting effect for the whole town.
