Yercaud Nam Uyirkadu Drive Restages an Old Plastic Ban

Salem Collector K. Elambahavath is covering 120 Yercaud locations in a 10-day drive against single-use plastic. The programme, titled Yercaud Nam Uyirkadu, will conclude on September 20, 2026.

On Saturday, September 12, he inspected coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants and other eateries in the hill town and briefed owners on banned items. Tamil Nadu wrote that ban into a government order in 2018. Yercaud has been restaging it ever since.

Nam Uyirkadu Puts 120 Stops on a 10-Day Map

Teams are moving through Yercaud Panchayat Union at 12 places a day, with cultural programmes, pamphlets and a push toward cloth bags. Elambahavath said the events are meant to show the harm from throwaway plastic, to get people to drop those products, and to protect the hill. He told tourists they have to cooperate as well, because Yercaud is a major destination, not only a local market town.

The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the Food Safety Department had already run surprise checks and seized plastic. The Saturday walk-through put the collector in the same shops that issue cups, bags and wrappers to weekend crowds. No tally from this round of seizures has been released.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The calendar: The drive runs 10 days and ends on September 20, 2026, with 12 sites a day and 120 locations in all.
• The shops: Coffee shops, eateries, restaurants and bakeries in Yercaud town were inspected on September 12.
• The ask: Locals and tourists are told to drop single-use plastic and switch to cloth bags, with pamphlets and cultural programmes at the stops.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• This week’s haul: Officials have not published how much plastic was taken from the shops Elambahavath visited.
• Entry screening: The district has not said whether the two ghat roads will start the kind of vehicle checks used in the Nilgiris.

The map is dense for a small hill station. It is also familiar. Awareness, cloth bags and a collector in an eatery are the same tools Salem has used on this hill before.

The Summer Festival Already Proved the Crowd Size

Yercaud is still sold as the poor man’s Ooty, a cheaper Shevaroy stop for families driving up from Salem, Bengaluru and the Tamil plains. The load shows up in May, when the Summer Festival and flower show compress a year’s worth of footfall into 10 days.

From May 22 to May 31, 2026, 3.69 lakh tourists came, up from 3.39 lakh during the previous year’s shorter festival window, a rise of 30,000 visits. Horticulture officials left the festival structures in the parks for another week because the crowd had already forced an extension from seven days to 10.

YERCAUD FESTIVAL STOPS, MAY 22 TO 31, 2026

Those spot counts are separate from the 3.69 lakh arrival figure, because one visitor can hit several viewpoints in a day. Pagoda Point and the temple already draw more people in 10 festival days than a panchayat waste crew can bag on a quiet Monday. Nam Uyirkadu now uses the same 10-day length on a calmer September calendar, after the crush has gone and before the next long weekend puts plates back on the verge.

Green Yercaud Did This Round in 2024

The Salem district administration launched the Green Yercaud Project on June 27, 2024, with the police and the Forest Department, aiming to make the hill a plastic-free zone. Officials said they had been trying to keep plastic off the station for three years by then. TNPCB staff had already taken banned items from a Yercaud shop that May.

By March 2026 the leftover pile was still large enough to need machines. District Rural Development Agency officials said Yercaud and the eight neighbouring panchayats lack proper solid waste systems, which is why garbage sits on roadsides. Waste that had built up for 10 years on a panchayat-owned site went into biomining from March 13, 2026, a nine-month job covering over 1,000 cubic metres. The mix is to be turned into refuse-derived fuel for cement plants, with biogas work running in parallel, and doorstep waste split into food waste and the rest.

The same DRDA briefing put the daily load at 1 tonne from the nine panchayats, rising to 5-6 tonnes on weekends. That weekend spike is the hill’s real calendar. A 10-day awareness map does not change how much a Saturday of tourist cars leaves behind.

On September 23, 2023, then Collector S. Karmegam had already walked the Salem-Yercaud ghat under a “Yercaud Our Pride” banner, with more than 1,000 walkers aged 7 to 75 taking an oath to keep plastic off the road. He said tourists were throwing bags and bottles on the ghat, and that the waste was harming monkeys and gaur. Three years later the collector’s office is back with a new title and the same request.

What the 2018 Plastic Order Already Outlawed

The items Elambahavath is asking shops to drop have been illegal in Tamil Nadu since January 1, 2019. Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami announced the ban in the Assembly on June 5, 2018, World Environment Day. The Environment and Forests Department issued G.O. (Ms) No. 84 on June 25, 2018, under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, covering manufacture, storage, supply, transport, sale and use of throwaway plastics, with exemptions for milk, oil, medicine and a few other packs.

The order hits the exact stock a hill eatery puts on a counter.

BANNED ITEMS THAT SHOW UP IN YERCAUD SHOPS

• Cups and tumblers: Plastic tea cups, plastic-coated paper cups, plastic tumblers and thermocol cups.
• Plates: Plastic and thermocol plates, plus plastic-coated paper plates.
• Bags: Plastic carry bags of every size and thickness, plastic-coated bags and non-woven bags.
• Table and drink kit: Cling film and plastic sheets on dining tables, plastic straws and water pouches.

The Centre later added a national layer. From July 1, 2022, India prohibited manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of identified single-use plastic items from July 2022, including plates, cups, cutlery, straws, stirrers, thin PVC banners and thermocol for decoration. Yercaud’s bakeries are not waiting for a new law. They are being asked, again, to obey the old one.

Cloth is the state’s named substitute. The collector is telling people to carry cloth bags, which is the local echo of the Meendum Manjappai cloth bag campaign the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company runs with TNPCB, GIZ and self-help groups. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin launched that drive on December 23, 2021, to bring back the yellow reusable bag. A September 16, 2024 government note said the state had put 188 Manjappai vending machines statewide and moved nearly 385,000 bags through them. Yercaud hotel managers have asked for those machines on the hill, along with water ATMs. The Nam Uyirkadu stops still hand out pamphlets rather than bags from a machine.

Ooty’s Ghat Posts and Yercaud’s Two Roads

The Madras High Court spent years tightening the other Tamil Nadu hills. On April 16, 2025, a special bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy banned manufacture, storage, supply, transport, sale and distribution of 28 plastic items throughout the Western Ghats, sanctuaries and tiger reserves from the Nilgiris to the Agasthiyar Biosphere in Kanniyakumari, and named the Nilgiris and Kodaikanal in that map. The list runs from one-time PET bottles for water and juice through plates, cups, bags, straws, flags, plastic-stick earbuds, candy and ice-cream sticks, sweet-box films and plastic trays.

The bench told the state to add a Motor Vehicles Act permit condition so that vehicles carrying those items can be detained. It asked collectors to put drinking water on ATMs and RO plants, and it floated a deposit-return kit of steel bottles and tiffin carriers at Rs 20 or Rs 50. Shopkeepers dealing in multilayer snack packs were told to cut the packs open and shift the food into butter paper. Yercaud is not named in that Western Ghats sweep. The Shevaroys sit on a different range, so the hill still works off the 2018 statewide order and whatever Salem can staff on two roads.

HOW THE TWO HILLS POLICE PLASTIC

Dr. K. Vishu, chairman emeritus of the Yercaud Hotel Owners Association, put the gap in plain terms in February 2026. He said basic mandates such as a total ban on carry bags and PET bottles were still not in force the way they are in Ooty and Kodaikanal, and that the lake and Shevaroyan Temple were paying for it.

Even though two check posts function in the two connecting roads to Yercaud town, including Salem Yercaud and Kuppanur Yercaud road, entry of banned plastic items, are not checked as it should be.

Dr. K. Vishu, Chairman Emeritus, Yercaud Hotel Owners Association

That is the second-order fact inside this 10-day drive. Salem can inspect a bakery. It cannot, on present staffing, empty every boot on the ghat the way the Nilgiris file now requires.

2,600 kg Came Out of 28 Hill Shops

The last large published raid was not an awareness walk. On July 12, 2025, a team led by Block Development Officer D. Palanisamy searched hotels, bakeries and grocery shops and took 2,600 kg of banned plastic, including carry bags, from 28 shops. Officials collected Rs 14,000 in fines. That sum is 28 shops at the Rs 500 first-offence rate.

Palanisamy said a first offence draws Rs 500, a second draws Rs 5,000, and a shop that keeps using plastic after warnings will be sealed. He told shopkeepers to switch to cloth bags and said surprise inspections would continue. A year later the collector is back in the same class of premises, briefing owners rather than publishing a new weight.

The shops are the only tap the district can turn without a court-ordered vehicle scheme. Tourists still arrive with bottles and snack film. After the pandemic, more of them have been coming, eating at the viewpoints, and leaving plates, bottles and paper where they stood. Hill panchayats do not have the crews or the trucks to match that pace, which is why the DRDA said roadside dumping became the default.

Weekend Waste Still Hits Five to Six Tonnes

The Botanical Survey of India’s Southern Regional Centre in Yercaud ran a cleanup at the Shevaroyan Temple area on June 13, 2025, and took nearly 40 kg of plastic garbage to village panchayat bins, then walked the public through a pledge. In the second week of September 2026, plastic was still piled along Yercaud Lake. The 10-day programme had not yet closed, and the lake already looked like the problem the pamphlets describe.

THE LOOP ON THE SHEVAROYS

1. June 5, 2018: Palaniswami announces a statewide ban on throwaway plastic from January 1, 2019.
2. January 1, 2019: G.O. (Ms) No. 84 takes effect.
3. December 23, 2021: Stalin launches Meendum Manjappai.
4. July 1, 2022: The Centre’s identified single-use list comes into force.
5. September 23, 2023: Karmegam leads the Yercaud Our Pride walk on the ghat.
6. June 27, 2024: Green Yercaud is launched as a plastic-free project.
7. April 16, 2025: The high court bans 28 items across the Western Ghats map that names Ooty and Kodaikanal.
8. July 12, 2025: Yercaud officials seize 2,600 kg from 28 shops.
9. March 13, 2026: Biomining starts on over 1,000 cubic metres of a 10-year dump.
10. May 22, 2026: The summer festival opens; 3.69 lakh visitors pass through by May 31.
11. September 12, 2026: Elambahavath inspects Yercaud eateries for Nam Uyirkadu, which ends on September 20.

Each date is a restaging of the last. The nine panchayats still put out 1 tonne on an ordinary day and 5-6 tonnes when the cars come up. The drive will conclude on September 20. The next busy weekend will refill the bins the pamphlets asked people to spare.