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[av_heading heading=’EDITORIAL | Say goodbye to plastic bags’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Sunday, June 11, 2017
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BEGINNING July 1, the use of plastic bags for wrapping, bagging and/or packaging will be prohibited in Iloilo City. It’s about time, really.
Why it took the city government so long to do this is beyond us. As early as 2008 the municipality of Santa Barbara, Iloilo passed an ordinance regulating the sale and use of plastic bags and plastic cellophane as bagging materials. This pioneering effort should convince other local governments not only in Western Visayas but in other regions to do the same.
People think plastic bags have become an irreplaceable component of modern living; that anything less than it could disrupt or make our daily lives less comfortable. But the fact is, there are many alternatives to plastics, including reusable shopping bags made of cloth and hemp and more recently, biodegradable plastic bags, which have been proven less harmful with bio-components that can decompose in the natural environment. These environmentally-acceptable alternative bags are not hard to find. They can eliminate thousands of plastic bags.
Plastics have also been blamed for clogging up sewers; causing soil and food chain contamination when polyethylene, the main component of plastic, breaks down and releases toxic substances that leach into the soil; and for killing marine and land animals that mistakenly ingest plastics or become entangled in plastic bags.
We urge more retail establishments and local governments to promote the use of alternative bags to curb the proliferation of polyethylene plastic bags and help raise public awareness on their harmful effects to the environment.
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