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Jakarta takes steps toward ban on single-use plastic bags

The Jakarta Environment Agency has started a campaign on the use of single-use plastic bags in traditional markets across the capital, including the largest, Kramat Jati wholesale market in East Jakarta

A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, December 19, 2018

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Jakarta takes steps toward ban on single-use plastic bags

T

he Jakarta Environment Agency has started a campaign on the use of single-use plastic bags in traditional markets across the capital, including the largest, Kramat Jati wholesale market in East Jakarta.

The move is aimed at introducing visitors and vendors of traditional markets to the new gubernatorial regulation to ban and limit single-use plastic bags in the city.

One of the campaign methods was to go around exchanging shoppers’ single-use plastic bags with reusable shopping bags and persuade them to switch to reusable shopping bags.

Isnaeni, 45, received two reusable shopping bags after buying flour, sugar, eggs and margarine at the market. Previously, she received single-use plastic bags from the vendors.

“I did have an idea to bring one [reusable shopping bag], but I completely forgot,” she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Agency head Isnawa Adji said the city would ban single-use plastic bags, with a gubernatorial regulation draft soon to be signed by Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan.

He said the regulation would set up a six-month transition period for markets managed by PD Pasar Jaya and retail stores to inform their customers that they would no longer give out single-use plastic bags, before imposing a total ban.

Isnawa said the regulation should be applied immediately because of the impact of single-use plastic bags on Jakarta’s environment.

“When the orange troops clean up the rivers, they find plastics. When they clean up the shoreline in Marunda, North Jakarta, they find plastics again. Plastics have made Jakarta unclean,” he added.

Isnawa said the agency found around 7,200 tons of waste produced by the city daily. Single-use plastic bags made up 1 percent of the waste, or 72 tons, he said.

He warned that the city’s main landfill in Bantar Gebang, Bekasi, West Java, would be full in terms of capacity by 2022, but the intermediate treatment facility (ITF) that the city is currently trying to procure would only be ready in two-and-a-half years.

To phase out the use of plastics, the agency embraced traditional markets under city-owned operator PD Pasar Jaya to educate vendors and consumers about limiting their use of single-use plastic bags.

PD Pasar Jaya president director Arief Nasrudin said traditional markets could contribute significantly to reducing plastic waste as they produced 600 tons of waste daily, between 30 and 40 percent of which was plastic waste.

Pasar Jaya operates 153 traditional markets in the city with 100,000 vendors.

Arief said the market operator would enforce the regulation once it was signed by the governor.

“The first step is getting people accustomed [to the regulation] in markets. The challenge for traditional markets is that the visitors are very diverse, so we need to figure out a way so that the visitors and vendors understand the regulation,” he said.

He said the practice would also be the same for Pasar Jaya market vendors, whether it be full elimination of single-use plastic bags or through an additional fee, to prevent different practices that could lead to unhealthy competition.

Isnawa said vendors who failed to comply with the regulation would be fined between Rp 5 million (US$420) and Rp 25 million, as stipulated in Article 129 of Jakarta Bylaw No. 3/2013 on waste management.

“During the first six-month transition period, we will keep educating people, persuading them to no longer use single-use plastic bags,” he said.

He hoped that by mid-2019 the city could truly ban single-use plastic bags.

Founder of movement Indonesia Plastic Bags Diet Tiza Marifa welcomed the agency’s move as it would persuade more people to ditch plastic bags.

“This will change consumer behavior to not use single-use plastic bags. So consumers realize that their consumption creates waste,” Tiza said.

She said consumers in Jakarta used up to 300 million sheets of single-use plastics in a year, adding to the 357,000 tons of plastic waste generated by the city each year.

However, some are skeptical the move will be effective.

For 57-year-old Farida Astuti, who runs spice kiosks in Kramat Jati market, most customers were still unprepared when shopping.

She said she spent around Rp 100,000 on various kinds of plastic bags every week. “There has to be awareness among shoppers as well as vendors,” Farida said.

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