Let us be responsible of our trash

FOR all shoppers, plastic bags is the most convenient mode to take their shopping away – it is cheap, strong and easy to carry.
Once at home, it is reused for marketing, packing and most become garbage bags at home.
Whatever its use is, the plastic bags do not just disappear when you toss them away.
Plastic bags are everywhere, at the bus stops, along the roads and fences often abandoned and at the mercy of the wind direction.
And there the bags begin a new, practically eternal afterlife, as a polluting nuisance.
The same becomes of plastic drink bottles, papers and betel nut husks and spittle.
The bigger rush and waste choke sewer drains and waterways, or they just roll around on the streets.
Plastic is lasting in modern society, but that is no reason not to try to limit the wastefulness and blight from its overuse.
Over the weekend the NCD governor launched a clean-up initiative to remove betel nut stains from city roads, traffic lights and bus stops.
It seems a good portion of the population in cities just cannot get the basics right – respect oneself, others and the community they live in.
Betel nut chewers these days are spitting all over the city.
Those who drove past the University of Papua New Guinea on Saturday will relate to what we are alluding to, it was the filthiest and ugliest site.
The school allowed vendors to trade along the fence because of the graduation.
It surely is an ugly site.
Such habits have become so common that we have become blind to the disgusting habit of chewing of betel nuts.
Some 20 million tons of plastic pollution enters the oceans each year, and it’s devastating the marine environment.
Plastic litter is also costly.
Some will say plastic shopping bags are a very, very tiny proportion of the plastics going into landfill or banning plastic bags is not necessarily always the best environmental outcome.
However, no individual action will solve the plastic marine
litter crisis, but swift implementation of these policies could
have a huge positive effect in reducing a critical environmental problem.
Scientists had found in recent researches traces of plastic in fish, turtles and other marine animals at micro level.
And plastics is a toxic chemical which is harmful to human health.
With that, the Government had to take that stand as most of our coastal communities as well as inland people dependent on fish resource for their daily livelihoods, it is important that government take appropriate actions to address the issue.
It is time shopper start using clear string bilums (woven bags) or the eco bags which are already being sold in major supermarkets before the ban comes into effect in November.
Concerned authorities now have the challenge of raising awareness on this ban at the same time, asking businesses not to take string bilums and baskets off shoppers, especially the womenfolk who will them to pack their shopping.
Shops may start using paper bags to pack shoppers.
Most of us do not give much thought to where our rubbish goes.
With the debates currently ongoing on the plastic ban, it is time we start paying attention, though, especially to the ever-present plastic refuse we too aside every
day.
Let us all support the Government by not using plastic bags and be responsible with our trash.