Plastic bags should be banned, the level of damage they are
causing mother nature is astronomical ; millions
continue being produced every day,
millions of them get dumped in the wrong places and sadly enough almost zero of them get recycled.
In fact comparing plastic bottles and their sisters the
plastic bags, more plastic bottles will end up in recycling factories while the
bags find their way in our rivers, drains, landfills, lakes and in our animals.
This is because plastic bottles are thicker and require little sorting and
cleaning unlike the nylon bag.
All that beautiful, ‘’prestigious’’ plastic bag branded
Tuskys,Naivas,Nakumatt, Bata etc that we
use every day for shopping is a poison to our environment . THINK ABOUT
IT.
There are fallacies
that we can recycle all plastic bags and that’s what plastic pro lobbies make us
believe, while the plain truth is that it’s not economically viable to recycle
plastic bags, it’s expensive to recycle them because of their thickness; they
are so thin, one will need to collect a bunch of them to make anything worth
the hustle, second they are very
flimsy, easily carried away by wind and
rain which makes it difficult to collect them , sorting them from other trash is
a challenge. They are used in most household to store all type of waste
-biodegradable waste- like potato peelings, leftover food and other myriad of
waste and in most cases inside the bags are other plastic bags mixed with rotting waste that
essentially compounds the problem, nobody wants to touch rotting things. It is
therefore a very expensive venture to even think of recycling plastic bags.
Most would rather collect bigger plastic materials.
When it’s so cheap to produce new plastic bags why would
somebody invest in recycling?
Plastic bag is a symbol of environmental wastefulness
–what’s the logic behind producing a single use bag that will last for hundreds
of years destroying the environment and killing animals on land and in oceans?
Did you know that
plastic bags in our drains are habitats for mosquitoes and therefore breeding
grounds for malaria, did you know that we spend so much collecting solid waste,
70% being plastic bags that will never be recycled and only lead to filling up
our landfills? To somebody who is conscious about the environment, that is a
threat to our lives.
Drastic actions
including banning plastic bags or at least introducing a direct charge for
every bag given to a customer by shopping malls should be introduced, so that
shoppers will feel the pinch are reuse more. Scotland introduced a 5p charge
for every plastic bag a shopper takes home, the number of plastic bags
littering their environment has plummeted since the ban was introduced.
Manufacturers who are the major polluters should be made to
track down what they produce, if they argue plastic bags can be recycled they
should be in the for front recycling it, otherwise the only viable way to deal
with plastic bags is banning them in totality, Rwanda is a perfect example that
indeed human beings can comfortably live without a single sheet of these
environmental degrading sheaths. Mauritania is the newest country to ban
plastic bags; this only shows how dangerous these bags are.
A lot has been said about Nairobi garbage and a lot must be
done, Nairobians have for the last few weeks taken to social media to lament,
the buck stops with each one of them as it stops with our leadership. Whenever
you go to a supermarket ask yourself do you really need that plastic bag, why
not just carry your own reusable bag, that way less bags will pollute our environment.
Make smart purchasing choices. When buying an item you feel it’s already
wrapped, refuse for an extra wrapper; make a habit of carrying your own bag.
Banning plastic bags is a damage control mechanism, we need
that speed bump to control the massive amount of plastic pollution, and it’s a
scourge. The money spend daily on waste collection will reduce drastically; it
will be used for other development projects.
We cannot continue sweeping these issues under the carpet
anymore. The government, both county and National have a constitutional role to
protect the environment, they should begin enacting implementing environmental
protection laws. The society too must embrace better waste management to combat
this problem.
One quick question to you, what do you think happens to your
shopping bags once they leave your door?Possibly you have no idea; best thing
to do is to THINK ABOUT IT
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| John Githongo CEO Inuka Kenya holding a banner in support of the campaign on banning of plastic bags in kenya |photo by Jeremy, Nisisi |
