‘CHARGE CONSUMERS’
Sun, 05/22/2016 - 12:00am
Plastic bags contributing to island’s waste problems
By:
Jenique Belgrave
Barbados must follow the example set by other countries and start charging consumers for the use of plastic bags.
Saying the time had come to make this mandatory across the board, Executive Director of the Future Centre Trust, Cherice Gibson, highlighted that for such a small island, Barbados spent millions of dollars on an annual basis on the importation of just plastic bags, which were then littered indiscriminately or dumped in landfills, significantly adding to the island’s waste problems.
In an interview with The Barbados Advocate recently, she highlighted therefore that Government must take a stance regarding the issue.
“The element of reusable shopping bags really has become one where there is a need for some position from Government, because while we have spoken to supermarket owners and store owners, there is that fear to a degree that ‘if I am charging, and my competitor isn’t, I will lose business’. And we saw it in the media recently, the backlash that one company got for saying that they are charging for plastic bags. So nobody wants to be the one to do it and come across as being unreasonable or unpopular,” she said.
“I think that businessmen are looking for something to come from Government and to come from being a legislative something, so that they can say we are abiding by the law,” she said.
Admitting that more persons are using reusable shopping bags, Gibson nevertheless said there was much room for improvement, noting that many individuals were still engaging in the practice of asking for a plastic bag with the purchase of a single bag of bread or a soda.
“Persons have this privacy belief that they do not want persons to see what they have just bought. So you buy a juice box and get a bag for it. Then when you are walking down the road, you see the bag with the box still inside of it on the ground. We need to move away from that mindset because we do not realise how that unnecessary behaviour is impacting the environment,” she remarked, while insisting that the Trust would continue to advocate for reusable bags to become the norm and for plastic bag use to be reduced.