A petition to send supermarket plastic bag revenue to an environmental protection fund

The Supreme Court has scheduled a date to consider a petition filed requesting an order that the tax charged for shopping bags sold to consumers by supermarkets and other commercial establishments must be compulsorily credited to a special environmental conservation fund established by the government. Accordingly, the court ordered that this petition be called on November 03 next month for the purpose of confirming the relevant facts.

This petition, brought before the court by the Centre for Environmental Justice, was called today before a three-member Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena, Achala Wengappuli, and Sampath Wijeratne. The bench reached this decision after considering the preliminary submissions made before the court by Attorney Dr. Ravindranath Dabare, who appeared on behalf of the petitioners' rights.

According to the provisions of the Environmental Conservation Tax Act, the petitioners state through their petition that the tax money charged for shopping bags issued to consumers by commercial establishments should be directly credited to a specific government environmental conservation fund. However, they point out that the current non-implementation of this process is completely contrary to the law. For this reason, the petitioner organization requests the Supreme Court to issue a clear order to the authorities to direct the relevant tax money to the designated government environmental conservation fund.