Plastic rules, explained
This is the single most common misunderstanding we hear, and it costs buyers real money — units over-specifying thickness they do not need because somebody half-remembered a headline. Here is what the rules actually say.
Read this first
This page is written to help you ask better questions, not to replace legal advice. Rules change, and your obligations depend on what you sell and how you sell it. Check your own position with a competent adviser before relying on it. Last reviewed August 2026.
Almost certainly not.
The minimum thickness rule — 75 micron from September 2021, then 120 micron from 31 December 2022 — applies to plastic carry bags: the bags handed to a customer to carry goods away. It does not set a minimum for product packaging, liners, or bags used inside a manufacturing or dispatch process. A 40-micron garment bag or a 50-micron courier mailer is not a carry bag and is not covered by that limit.
QR or barcode on plastic packaging.
The 2024–25 amendments introduced a marking requirement for plastic packaging, with a barcode, QR code or unique identification carrying prescribed details including thickness. Obligations fall primarily on producers, importers and brand owners. If you are the brand owner putting the packaging into the market, this is your obligation — and we can print what you need onto the bag.
If you are a brand owner, yes.
Extended Producer Responsibility registration on the CPCB portal applies to producers, importers and brand owners handling plastic packaging. It involves registering, declaring your packaging categories, and meeting category-wise recycling targets against what you place in the market. Buying bags from us does not create the obligation — placing packaged product into the market does.
Yes — resin code 4.
Polyethylene film is recyclable and is recovered through established channels. Our film is single-material LLDPE with no laminate layers, which makes it substantially easier to recycle than multi-layer structures — a mixed laminate has to be separated before it can be recovered, and usually is not.
Grade, conformity and specification, in writing.
We will confirm in writing that the film is 100% virgin LLDPE of a grade conforming to IS 10146 — polyethylene for safe use in contact with foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and drinking water — with additives restricted to the IS 10141 positive list, along with the thickness and dimensions of your specification.
Three questions
Our checker walks through the same logic as this page and tells you which obligations attach to your specific bag and how you use it.
Open the checkerWhy we wrote this
A thicker bag is a bigger invoice for us. We would earn more by letting the confusion stand. But a customer who over-specifies once and finds out later is a customer who stops trusting the supplier who let it happen.
We will confirm the grade, the conformity references and your exact specification in writing against any enquiry — the document your QA team actually needs.