islamabad - Traders and shopkeepers in Islamabad continue to use non-degradable plastic bags as the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency has failed to implement the law banning their use.
On January 23, 2013, the Pak-EPA promulgated regulations titled “Prohibition of Non-degradable Plastic Products (manufacturing, sale and usage) Regulations 2013”, banning the use of non-degradable plastic bags in the Islamabad Capital Territory effective from April 1, 2013.
Officials claimed that the Ministry of Climate Change has consistently been urging the Pak-EPA to implement the regulations in the federal capital but the agency was not forthcoming making excuses that it lacked manpower and resources to implement the law.
According to the officials, around 55 billion plastic bags are used each year in the country posing serious threats to environment and the federal capital is no exception as traders and shopkeepers continue to use.
According to the official data, about 8,021 units across the country produce plastic bags, employing around 160,000 people directly and 600,000 people indirectly.
The non-degradable plastic bags - notorious for choking sewer, open drainage system, spoiling sanitation and creating an overall hideous sight of environment- are mostly used by traders and shopkeepers.
The non-biodegrade bags take much longer time to degrade. High density polyethylene may take more than 20 years to rot.
According to experts, a trillion plastic bags are used annually only once and nearly 2 million plastic bags every minute around the world. Degradable plastic bags are classified into three categories, oxy-degradable, photo-degradable and bio-degradable.
Oxy-degradable is considered the best option as these bags get disintegrated in presence of oxygen, whether through the atmosphere or from the water. In other words, these bags decay in the presence of air and water.
Photo or bio-degradable are disposed of either in landfills or burned. Both these methods are dangerous for the environment as a single plastic bag takes approximately hundreds of years to properly degrade through the natural process. These bags when eaten by animals cause blockage of the intestine and create other digestion issues.
They hinder the growth of crops and other trees, the roots of plants cannot reach their food nutrients in soil due to landfills with these plastic bags. These plastics play havoc with marine life when they are thrown into water channels. According to officials, the government is considering banning manufacturing, selling and using non-degradable plastic bags in the country.
It is also mulling over increasing the thickness of degradable bags to 30 microns to rationalize tariff in favour of the manufactures and concession on the import of automatic paper bag machinery.