Green activists for stopping use of plastic bags

Dhaka, 4 July, 2020: Green activists at a webinar on Friday said that the use of plastic bags was gradually decreasing but it should be stopped soon to save the earth, specially the marine environment.

Activists across the world urged the respective governments to enforce law on plastic bag ban as the plastic bags, mostly made up of single-use plastic, were responsible for environment pollution.

Bangladeshi green organisation Environment and Social Development Organisation organised the discussion highlighting urgency the importance of enforcement of plastic bag ban law in Bangladesh, marking the ‘International Plastic Bag Free Day 2020’.

Griffins Ochieng, programme coordinator of the Centre of Environmental Justice and Development in Nairobi, Gaelle Haut, EU affairs project manager in Brussels, Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free From Plastic, Froilan Grate, executive director of GAIA Philippines and the Asia Pacific coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and Md Ziaul Haque, director of Department of Environment spoke, among others at the event.

They also emphasised on plastic bag ban regulation and enforcement, said a press release.

Globally 5 trillion plastic bags were used yearly and that is 160,000 plastic bags per second. The yearly average used per person is over 700 single-use plastic, they said quoting the Earth Policy Institute unveiled in 2014.

According to the data, two million plastic bags were used every minute around the world, which are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 marine animals annually.

They said that most of the plastic bags were simply thrown out as less than 1 per cent of them were recycled after use in an average of 12 minutes.

Approximately one million sea birds also die from plastic as 10 per cent of the plastic produced every year worldwide ends up in the ocean and 70 per cent of which find their way to the ocean floor, where they will likely never degrade.

Bangladesh, a pioneer country that had put a ban on plastic bag in 2002, is yet to phase out the harmful product.

ESDO general secretary Shahriar Hossain said that billions of plastic bags end up as litter each year and these bags were made of polypropylene, a material made of petroleum and natural gas, both were non-renewable fossil fuel.

ESDO executive director Siddika Sultana said that they would continue their efforts to raise public voice against the production and use of single-use plastics.

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Posted by admin on Jul 4 2020. Filed under News at Now, News Worldwide, No Plastic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry