Jakarta to ban single-use plastic bags by June
The Indonesian capital of Jakarta will soon ban single-use plastic bags in markets and shopping centres, joining other cities in the region in reducing the use of disposables commonly associated with ocean pollution.
The gubernatorial decree signed by Jakarta Governor defined eco-friendly options as bags made from leaf, paper, cloth, polyester and its derivatives, as well as recycled material. Such bags should have adequate thickness, are recyclable and designed to be used several times before they are disposed of.
This regulation still allows malls, supermarkets, and traditional market to provide disposable plastic packaging in order to accommodate food that has not been wrapped in anything. The exception is made in order to maintain sanitation of foodstuffs that have not been wrapped by any packaging. If there is a substitute material, then the use of disposable plastic packaging bags will be stopped completely.
With this new regulation, Jakarta joins the ranks of other Indonesian cities that have enforced a ban on single-use plastic bags, including Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Bogor in West Java and Bali.
Unable to cope with the amount of solid waste generated by a metropolitan area that is home to 30 million people, Jakarta’s enviornmental agency says the city’s landfills are near capacity.
Indonesia, the world’s second biggest contributor of plastic pollutants in the oceans, churns out 9.85 billion plastic bags each year, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was reported as saying in July last year.
Nowhere, apart from China, according to a Science journal report in 2015, dumps more plastic waste in the sea than Indonesia, an archipelago nation of 260 million people.
