A sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change Wednesday directed Ministry of Climate Change and other relevant departments to initiate efforts to make Islamabad a plastic bags free city. The meeting of the committee was held here at the Parliament House under its convener Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed.
Briefing the committee members, Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul said that the ministry has been working on initiating a campaign against the rampant use of plastic bags under the Clean and Green Pakistan project of the government.
She said that her ministry was stuck in a catch-22 situation because the shutting down of the plastic bags industry would render hundreds of people jobless. She, however, said that her ministry is committed to finding out a viable solution to make the Islamabad a plastic bags free city.
The ministry officials informed the committee members that there have been five types of plastic bags and they have been trying to introduce biodegradable bags in the federal capital.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed said that efforts should be initiated to make the Parliament plastic bags free place, adding that media should also be involved in the campaign to create awareness among the masses about the hazards of plastic bags.
Dr Junaid Zaidi, Executive Director COMSATS University, informed the committee members that the COMSATS is the only university in Pakistan that is plastic free. He said that they were willing to cooperate with relevant institutions to restore beauty of Islamabad.
The mayor Islamabad briefed the committee members about collection of trash and garbage from different sectors of the federal capital, adding that he has sought funds from the government to increase the efforts for trash collection, but to no avail yet. He also informed the committee members about shortage of the staff to collect garbage from all sectors of the federal capital.
The National Assembly was informed in December last year that Pakistan has been using around 55 billion plastic shopping bags each year while the use is on the rise at the rate of 15 percent per annum. There are about 8,021 production units in the country with average production capacity of 250-500 kilograms per day and majority of them are cottage industry.
Plastic bags take much longer time to degrade (non-biodegradable) as under the best circumstances high density polyethylene will take more than 20 years to degrade, while approximately 1 60,000 people are directly and 600,000 people are indirectly dependent on this industry.