Small shops to receive free reusable bags for customers

The government is set to roll out another phase of its T-shirt plastic bag ban.
Minister of Health, Molwyn Joseph said in this phase, village shops will be targeted as part of the initiative in which reusable bags will be distributed to community shops, at no cost to shopkeepers.
“We have not reached the end of the road and over the next few months we will be giving out these reusable bags so that shop owners can give them to their customers. We wanted to give them time to come on-board and those bags we will be giving out, will be free to customers,” Joseph told OBSERVER media.
On July 1, 2016, the government banned the importation of plastic grocery bags, and major supermarkets were given time to use up their supplies of plastic bags, while introducing reusable shopping bags made from eco-friendly material, as an alternative.
The Environment Division had been concerned about the large quantity of plastic bags that had been littering the island, especially the beaches as well as being dumped at the Cooks landfill.
The lifespan of a plastic bag is said to be 400 years, which means it takes over four centuries for the earth to absorb the remains of a plastic bag.
Plastic bags have been around for over 30 years and worldwide estimates claim 500-million to one-trillion bags are used and discarded, each year.
Joseph said, since the ban, 90 per cent of the plastic bags used in retail sales have been eliminated.
“The bags we will be distributing came from the first set of bags that we imported in the beginning of the programme of the elimination of plastic bags. I think at that time we spent about US $100,000 to bring in several thousand bags for this purpose,” he said.
Almost two years into the plastic bag ban, Joseph has hailed the programme a “success”.