Plastic menace: Authorities must take lead

There is only one way for Brunei Darussalam to rid itself of the plastic bag menace the authorities, whether it is the municipal council or the environment authorities, must take the lead.

Only they can lay down the rules such as requiring supermarkets and other shopping outlets to impose a charge say 10 cents per plastic bag to discourage their use as shopping bags.

Left to their own, supermarkets and other retail outlets would be unwilling to charge for plastic bags as it would mean alienating themselves from customers, especially if they are the only ones doing it. Except for environment-conscious customers, who are very much in the minority, the others would abandon them for outlets which provide free plastic bags. When fees are charged, the revenue collected could be devoted to projects to improve the environment.

The drive to rid the world of the plastic bag menace has been gaining momentum, especially over the last few years the latest being Miri, the Malaysian town bordering Brunei's Kuala Belait. Miri managed to get all supermarkets and other major retail outlets to agree to charge 20 cents (M'sian) per bag from May 1 (The Brunei Times, July 24, 2010). In one month, the sale of plastic bags dropped from 20,000 to just over 15,000 in June; and is still dropping. Until the levy was placed on plastic bags, Miri authorities had no idea how many plastic bags were given out every month.

As for Brunei, one can only guess how many plastic bags are given out by Brunei retail outlets. Bearing in mind that Brunei has a population of about 400,000 (not counting expatriates) compared to Miri's 271,000, the number must definitely be at least 50 per cent more than that issued in Miri.

Plastic bags can take up to a thousand years to disintegrate completely and for that duration they will pose a danger to wildlife on land and sea. With the world currently consuming about 500 billion plastic bags most a year, most of which are discarded after one-time use, there are already trillions of plastic bags messing up our environment. Where does Brunei stand in comparison to the rest of the world in this respect?

Brunei can, however, go one step further than Miri and many other municipalities setting a date for the complete ban on plastic. It could be in 2012 as in the case of California the first state in the US that has legislated for a ban on plastic bags effective 2012. From that year, shoppers who do not bring their own reusable bag will be charged five cents (US) for a partially recycled paper bag.

One of the major failings of human beings is that they generally do not act to prevent disaster until they literally come to a precipice and they are looking at it in the face. The usual approach is to trouble-shoot, that is initiate rescue and remedial measures after a disaster has taken place rather than acting to prevent it in the first place. We have reached that precipice in terms of plastic bags. The time to act is now.