Sing-use plastics, small water bottles & take-away plates on list for ban

Small water bottles below 600mils and take-away plates will be amongst those that will be banned once the regulation to ban plastic comes into force.

Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology (MECDM), Dr. Melchior Mataki who’s ministry is responsible for the regulation told journalists that the Cabinet has already endorsed the proposal for the banning of certain categories of plastics.

He said now a joint taskforce consisting of his ministry, finance and the AG’s Chambers is been set-up to come with a drafting instruction for the regulation before it goes to the drafting section within the Attorney-General Chambers.

Mataki said the idea is to have that regulation in place before the games (in November) but the actual implementation may take up from six to 12 months as had been the case elsewhere in the region.

He said this is to allow importers and manufactures that have already plastics in the country to sell off their stocks.

Mataki said the intension is to ban single-use plastics, and plastics that already have other environmentally friendlier options here.

On the list to for banning is straw, plastic based take-away plates and small water bottles (below 600mil).

Why is the action taken? Dr Mataki said Honiara alone generates about 103,000 tons of waste a year and plastics accounts for 2,488 tons on a daily Honiara puts out 6.2 tones of plastic.

“We do not have a lot of options so all (plastics) flow out into the environment. This is one of the reasons we want to have the ban in place. It will take care of some categories of plastics.”

“We will also be looking at banning the manufacture use of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles of certain sizes. For example, anything below 600MM will be discouraged.

 News@SBMOnline2023