SINGLE-USE plastic bags are banned from today.
According to Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s ministerial statement in Parliament last year, the ban on all single-use plastic bags included those with and without handles.
He also said the plastic bag levy would increase from 20 cents to 50 cents today and this would apply on all low density polyethylene (LDPE) bags.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum had said prior to the advent of plastic bags, Fijians used reusable, nature-based bags.
He said Fijians needed to wean themselves off plastic if the country was to improve the health of its oceans on which much of Fiji’s food and livelihoods depended.
The A-G said Government was encouraging the use of reusable shopping baskets and bags made and woven by Fijian women and artisans.
Meanwhile, during the Clean Pacific Roundtable discussions in Suva in August, 2018, it was revealed that Fiji used about 70 million plastic bags annually.
However, after the introduction of the 10 cent plastic bag levy in August 2017, the number dropped by almost half.
The plastic bag pollution was also highlighted by the director-general of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) Kosi Latu, who said that a study on fish ingestion, with samples from Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa and Rapa Nui, showed that 97 per cent of all species had micro-plastics.
He said this was 30 per cent higher than the global average, making the plastic bag issue a food security issue.
