South Africa moves to curb flimsy plastic bag scourge
Date: 01-Oct-02
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Toby Reynolds
Plastic bags will now have to be thicker, with the aim of making it too expensive for retailers to give them away at no charge, government and business officials said.
Environment Minister Valli Moosa had wanted to ban the bags altogether, but agreed to a minimum thickness after retailers and the plastic industry protested.
"Nobody could have imagined that the humble plastic bag could have resulted in such hard negotiations," Moosa told reporters at a signing ceremony.
He said the agreement between industry, trade unions and government would serve as a benchmark for other countries trying to cut back on plastic bags.
Moosa said the deal would also curb the use of environmentally harmful inks and encourage recycling.
The hope is that South African consumers, who use an estimated eight billion plastic bags a year, will change their behaviour and cut down if they are forced to pay.
Super-thin shopping bags get caught in fences and bushes and foul waterways across the country, forcing millions of rand in cleanup costs. They also entangle birds and get caught in the throats of other wild animals, sometimes causing death.
Bag disposal is a particular problem in poor and rural communities, where cheap, flimsy ones are widely dispensed and accumulate in heaps by the roadside and get stuck in trees.
"Plastic bags are definitely quite a problem environmentally," Rob Little of environmental group WWF South Africa told Reuters. "They break down so slowly and they are used in huge volumes."
Under new regulations bags will have a minimum thickness of a thirtieth of a millimetre (less than one seven-hundredth of an inch), about double the current average.
Retailers will have to detail the cost of the bags so consumers can decide how many they want to pay for, Moosa said.
