BAN ON PLASTIC BAGS
In our country people are much habituated to use plastic bags or polythene bags. It is used while buying vegetables, stationary, fish, meat, milk, food etc, that usually gets thrown away.
If all those bags are added up, officials estimate, they total 55 billion a year. Easily torn and too weak to use again, they end up clogging city drains and sewers, piled up in vacant lots and parks, ingested by grazing goats and dogs foraging for food, and polluting canals and streams.
Recently, government has taken a wise step
and decided to set a new rule of not to use plastic bags anymore. No seller can keep plastic bags in their store to pack. Anyone who uses, sells or manufactures them will face a fine because you cannot burn, bury, reuse or recycle these bags.
Plastic or polythene bag’s contamination has now become a big problem because there is no specific method to dispose off the bag, many plastic bags are thrown in the sea as a result the beach gets polluted and causes the threat to the marine life.
Another problem is with people who don’t dispose off their plastics responsibly, who won’t use recycling facilities properly and instead stuff all their trash in yet more plastic and put it in the landfill bin.
Today, more than 40 countries have either banned or taxed single-use plastic bags.
The use of plastic bags was banned in Islamabad by a cabinet decision from Aug 14.
The federal government’s ban on plastic and polythene shopping bags in the capital has yet to be fully implemented.
Shoppers are not likely to be aggressively pursued, but companies that make and supply the bags have been warned that they will be inspected to enforce the ban.
The shopkeepers and customers having difficulty finding alternative bags, so the plastic bags are still in use at various markets.
To encourage customers to obey the law, officials have introduced colourful cloth tote bags. They have promoted the bags on social media, accompanied by catchy slogans and images of trash heaps on fire and birds caught in plastic bags.
The common man is happy with this decision of the Government but they are in a view that banning shopping bags is a big decision, and such initiatives take some time to properly implement.
Now people must make an habit to use alternatives such as fabric or paper bags if they want to secure their future generation.
To completely work on that, people need to change their behaviour, one will not be allowed to commit environmental crime, as the use of plastic bags is considered as an environmental crime.
