Environment minister urges fellow government officials to ban plastics

The minister, who made the remarks during an ongoing meeting at the Sheraton Hotel Kampala meant to negotiate the formulation of a global treaty on plastics, said that the ban on the production and usage of single-use plastics, including polythene bags with less than 30 microns, will guard the country against poor disposal of plastics that continues to have a huge toll on the environment as well as human and animal health.

“Despite the gravity of plastic pollution, Uganda, like other African countries, lacks a comprehensive mechanism, capacity, and resources to manage plastic pollution. The manufacturers were saying that they would collect all plastic bags and recycle them, but this was just a lie. It is better to manage at the source than to go around collecting all that is produced,” Cheptoris said.

He added, "If you had moved around the outskirts of Kampala, you would see very many plastic carrier bags, which we have been fighting to ban, but the manufacturers have been fighting back with all their might."

The world, through the United Nations Assembly, constituted a committee to negotiate a legally binding treaty to control plastic pollution globally. Countries are now undertaking negotiations to develop this treaty.

According to the Independent Magazine Uganda, the Executive Director of the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), Dr. Barirega Akankwasah, revealed that NEMA embarked on a sensitisation campaign last year about the dangers of single-use plastics and the need to shun them.

Research conducted by the World Climate School’s Uganda chapter indicated that more than 75% of used plastic bottles end up in landfills, lakes, and rivers, which is seriously damaging to the environment.

Statistics from NEMA show that plastics take up the lion’s share of this waste, with over 600 metric tonnes being produced every day throughout the country. Given that only 40% of this waste is collected and disposed of properly, the remaining 60% finds its way into the environment, leading to a number of problems.