Oman’s environment agency calls for ban on plastic bags

Oman’s environment agency wants a ban on plastic bags.

“Plastic is not banned in Oman, but the government is working on that,” said Yusra Jaffer, PR manager of the Environment Society of Oman (ESO).

ESO has been working hard for years to address the harmful effects of plastic on the environment.

“Recently, when Japan came up with the plastic (bag) ban, we put that up on our social media. We had a campaign back in 2008—a no plastic bag campaign. A lot of the supermarkets had started providing the option of reusable bags and we gave away a number of jute bags to a lot of customers,” she added.

“There has been a change in behaviour, but it is an issue that needs to be worked on more.”

Plastic is produced and used in large quantities across the world. According to ESO, approximately 5 trillion plastic bags are produced each year.

Plastic bags are mostly handed out for free and are therefore used liberally. The average plastic bag is used for 20 minutes before being thrown away.

Even the small proportion that are re-used will eventually either end up in a landfill or as litter on land. As they are a recent invention, they do not yet known for how long they last— current estimates stand between 400 and 1,000 years.

Littering is currently a major issue, not just in Oman, but across the globe.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example, is a vast swathe of ocean, which consists of garbage spread across 3.5 million square kilometres, according to Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organisation partly funded by the Dutch government, which is looking to tidy up our seas and oceans.

In an unconventional move to raise awareness towards this problem, two advertising creatives—Dan de Almeida and Michael Hughes—launched a proposal to recognise the patch as a sovereign nation, known as the Trash Isles, having even come up with mock-ups of a passport, flags, currency and stamps for this would-be nation.

They have also approached the United Nations for official statehood for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which would make it the world’s 194th country. According to the World Bank, as of 2012, around 1.3 billion tonnes of garbage were generated per year, across the world.