Jakartans welcome single-use plastic bag ban

JAKARTA: Jakarta has finally hopped onto the bandwagon of regions restricting single-use plastic bags by issuing a long-anticipated regulation on the matter.

Gubernatorial Regulation No. 142/2019 on eco-friendly bag usage was signed by Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan on Dec 27 and is to take effect in June, six months after it was enacted on Dec 31.

The regulation imposes a ban on single-use plastic bags in modern department stores and supermarkets, as well as traditional markets, and requires eco-friendly bags to be available in stores and markets.

Failure to do so would result in a minimum fine of five million rupiah (RM1,468), which must be paid within a week of the stores receiving a notification letter about the sanction.

The penalty would multiply if the stores fail to pay within deadline.

If offending stores do not pay the penalty five weeks of getting the warning, their permits will be frozen and possibly revoked.

Anies said that although not all plastics were problematic and some could even be repurposed, the latest regulation was made to raise awareness.

“The point is that we want to raise people’s awareness to reduce plastic waste, ” Anies said on Tuesday.According to the Indonesian Plastic Bag Diet Movement, Jakarta uses up to 300 million sheets of single-use plastic in a year, contributing to the 357,000 tonnes of plastic waste generated by the city annually.

Jakartans lauded the effort to ban single-use plastics, seemingly tired of the materials being ever-present in stores and trash.

Ilham Hadi Permadi, 29, resident of Cipinang, East Jakarta, said he welcomed the ban.

“I’m happy about the gubernatorial regulation on the ban on single-use plastics because it will help the environment to be free of the danger of using plastics, ” Ilham said.He said the transition to plastic-free life might still have a long way to go, with plastics presently used by retailers and online food delivery services.

“I wish the word of this regulation would be more spread out, even though (people) have been educated (about reducing plastic waste) for a while, we still need to be reminded so all levels of people and businesses realise the danger of plastic, ” he said. — The Jakarta Post/ANN