Govt officials demand ban on single-use plastics

Senior government officials have called for a ban on the production and usage of single-use plastics, including polythene bags with less than 30 microns.

Mr Sam Cheptoris, the Minister of Water and Environment, said a ban of plastics will guard the country against poor disposal of plastics that continue to have a huge toll on the environment as well as human and animal health.

“If you had moved around the outskirts of Kampala, you would see very many plastic carrier bags which we have been fighting to ban, but the manufacturers have been fighting back with all their mighty,” the minister told delegates who are attending the ongoing meeting at Sheraton Hotel, Kampala to negotiate the formulation a global treaty indented to check plastic pollution.

“Despite the gravity of plastic pollution, Uganda like other African countries lack a comprehensive mechanism, capacity and resources to manage plastic pollution. The manufacturers were saying that they would collect all plastic bags and recycle them but this was just a lie. It is better to manage at the source than to go round collecting all that is produced, “the minister said.

The world through the United Nations Assembly, constituted a committee to negotiate legally binding treaty to control plastic pollution globally.

Countries are now undertaking negotiations to develop this treaty.

The minister noted that while government appreciates that plastics have very many valuable uses, pollution continues to cause severe environmental and human consequences through micro plastic deposits on land, rivers, lakes, and oceans worldwide. Single use plastic carriers for instance are an all-round polluter of human and animal health, leading to loss of livelihoods, increasing greenhouse emissions and contributing to biodiversity loss, thereby,  compromising the eco- system on land and water bodies.

He also noted that Uganda and other countries depend on agriculture, yet plastics have been cited as a major component of soil degradation.

The minister also revealed that plastics take more than 400 years to decompose.

Mr Cheptoris said African leaders and negotiators should seek for strategies for global plastic waste reduction and minimisation in a unified and coordinated manner and also ensure that the globally binding instrument which is being developed, attends to issues that are specific in Africa.

He also revealed that Kampala Capital City Authority ( KCCA)’s  records indicate that the authority spends over Shs6.4b annually  unblocking drainages clogged plastics, the money which he said can be invested in social services to better the wellbeing of Ugandans.

 “If you were to stay here longer. You wouldn’t miss to see floods in Kampala . You will be lucky enough to escape it because all the drainages have been blocked by practices among others things,”Mr Cheptoris told guests.

Dr Akankwasa Barirega, the Executive Director of National Environment Management Authority (Nema), said Cabinet had  already  given a green light to the amendment of the NEMA Act to ban plastics of certain microns.

“Cabinet agreed that we should amend the NEMA Act to have a total ban of plastics. Because enforcement of 30 microns and below is impossible since a human eye can’t differentiate those with 30 and 40 microns,” Mr Barirega said.