Say no to plastic to clean environment

Muscat: Nations across the globe celebrate on June 5 every year the World Environment Day. The theme for World Environment Day 2023 is 'Beat plastic pollution.'

This year the host is the West African country, Côte d'Ivoire, in partnership with the Netherlands. The day urges everyone to look at ways to prevent plastic pollution.

According to the organisers of World Environment Day, "The world is being inundated by plastic. More than 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced annually, half of which is designed to be used only once." A simple way to contribute would be to take the step to use reusable products such as mugs, food containers and shopping bags.

This also requires refusing and saying no to single-use cutlery and straws.

In Oman, the focus has been on plastic bags, and on January 1, 2023, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP) issued a ban on the import of plastic bags.

According to be'ah's Sustainability Report for the year 2022, the most prominent initiatives that help decrease plastic's impact are recycling it or using environmentally friendly alternatives and increasing community awareness about it." The damage caused by plastic is not that it reaches the landfills, it has non - degradable chemicals, and the fact that it is reaching the food chain show that action must be taken now.

"Plastic waste has been considered to be the biggest threat to our environment and makes up 21 per cent by weight and 50 per cent by volume of the engineered landfills set up across the length and breadth of the country," stated Be'ah in its study.

Bangladesh was the first country to ban light plastic bags way back in 2002. The country imposed a total ban. But now the focus is also on plastic cups, cutlery, and much more, not to forget the water bottles.