Last Tuesday, hopeful and determined campaigners that an Indonesian city’s ban on single-use plastic bags should encourage similar policies by local governments elsewhere in Asia. An Asia that is awash in plastic waste.
The city of Bogor (about 1 million people) lies 60 km south of Jakarta. It has begun to implement the ban on plastic on December 1 in shopping centers and supermarkets. Traditional markets will be next.
“Bogor is a good sign of the shift that we want,” said Muharram Atha Rasyadi, a Jakarta-based campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia. “We are pushing other city governments to apply this kind of regulation.”
Globally, between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used annually, according to industry estimates, with fewer than 10 percent recycled and many ending up in the ocean. Some 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into oceans every year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain, according to the U.N. Environment Program.
Five Asian countries - China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand - accounted for up to 60 percent of plastic waste leaking into oceans, according to a 2015 study. Contributing factors include fast-growing economies and populations, long coastlines with many densely-populated cities, and inadequate waste and recycling infrastructure.
Reuters.com reports how national or local governments in more than 40 countries around the world have imposed bans on single-use plastic bags, including the Philippines, Malaysia, India and China.
