Punjab govt making policy about plastic bags: EPD minister

Provincial EPD Minister M Rizwan said that the Punjab government is going to introduce a new policy regarding plastic bags by incorporating the reforms introduced by Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said this while addressing a seminar on the topic of ‘No plastic bag campaign: under the clean and green Pakistan’ movement, jointly organised by Environment Protection Department Punjab and an NGO Agahee at Town Hall on Wednesday.
MPA Uzma Kardar, WASA Chairman Sheikh Imtiaz, Agahee CEO Mubarak Ali and other related persons attended the seminar. EPD DD Ali Ejaz delivered welcome speech and threw the light on the importance of seminar to control pollution.
The minister claimed that the issue regarding the material, size and thickness of plastic bags has been settled with the manufacturers’ association. However, the technical and the scientific panel was also being formed for further recommendations and said that plastic bags in their present form were posing a grave risk to the environment and human health.
Judicial Commission Chairman Justice (retd) Ali Akbar said in his address that the Lahore High Court banned use of plastic bags at all megastores in the provincial metropolis and gave them a 15-day deadline to comply with the order and switch to alternative shopping bags. Justice Shahid Karim said that direction being made to the Punjab government to legislate on banning use, manufacture and sale of polythene bags and introduce a necessary legislation in this regard.
EPD DG Tanveer Waraich said that as per the latest research of local and international organisations, the polythene bags were found to have been a cause of major environment disasters. The DG said that it was pertinent to mention that Environmental Protection Department (EPD), Punjab, has already declared biodegradable plastic bags harmful for environment.
He further said that decomposing of bags sounds environment-friendly but it requires a lot of energy and bags do not degrade in landfills and leave toxic leftovers. “This is why European Union has also started discouraging the use and production of biodegradable plastic and bags”, he maintained. Representative of LWMC said that plastic bags, irrespective of thickness, could cause sewerage system damage, spread of diseases/epidemics, soil pollution, water pollution, floods, eventually leading to severe environment pollution and human health hazards in both urban and rural areas of Punjab.