1 million plastic bags change hands each day

Publicity blitz involving supermarkets soon to make people use plastic bags less as they are choking the environment

By Sharmilpal Kaur

MORE than one million plastic shopping bags are given out here each day. One researcher estimates that people here use as many as 40 billion bags in a year.

While most of the bags are burnt in incinerators, many end up in rivers and swamps, choking marine life and strangling mangroves.

During a coastal clean-up of the Kranji mangroves last year, the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) found that plastic made up the bulk of the trash collected, forming as much as 65 per cent of it. Almost a quarter of this comprised bags and wrapping.

SEC executive director Penelope Phoon said: 'Many plastic bags end up on the coastline, causing serious damage to marine life.'

This is one of the reasons why the council is gearing up to launch a publicity blitz in June to make people use plastic bags less. It hopes to get supermarkets involved in the campaign.

Some of the proposals for its 'Bag It' drive include introducing biodegradable bags and selling reusable cloth and jute bags for between $3 and $5 at supermarkets.

If the project takes off, customers may be able to reclaim the cost of these bags if they return them after using them, like they do with shopping carts.

The council is willing to go one step further by sourcing for manufacturers of the jute and cloth bags, to make it easier for the supermarkets to make the switch.

Singapore's biggest supermarket chain, NTUC FairPrice, gives out a total of 160 million bags each year.

Cold Storage spends about $2 million each year on the 70 million plastic bags it puts its customers' goods in.

Several grocery shops said that many customers automatically ask for extra bags.

Plastic bags are usually used by households to dispose of their refuse, such as food waste, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry (ENV) told The Straits Times.

She added: 'Plastic shopping bags are made of polyethylene and can be incinerated safely at our plants, which are equipped with pollution-control equipment.'

To combat the problem of excessive plastic bags, Ireland began levying a tax on these containers last month.

Asked if the ministry would consider imposing a similar levy, the ENV spokesman said that the ministry is not against the use of plastic bags.

But she added that ENV would 'support any move by the retail sector to charge for plastic bags, as this would reduce excessive usage'.

NTUC FairPrice has no plans at the moment to charge for the bags. A Cold Storage spokesman added: 'We have conducted surveys, and the results indicate clearly that customers will not pay for the shopping bags.'