Set campaign on anti-littering

Letters

BANNING single use plastic bags and getting people to buy reusable bags will not work in PNG the way it does in other countries.
In PNG, if you walk out of a shop with items that are not in a plastic bag the security guards hold you and check you because they suspect you of allegedly stealing.
It’s going to cause all sorts of clashes between customers and security.
Reusable bags that customers have to pay for won’t work because;

  • PEOPLE won’t want to pay; and,
  • PEOPLE are not going to carry empty shopping bags around all day in case they decide to buy something at the shop.

So many purchases are unplanned and people won’t come prepared with empty shopping bags, apart from those few people who have cars to carry them around.
So-called single use supermarket plastic bags are not usually ‘single use’ anyway.
Most PNG households reuse their supermarket plastics as rubbish bags and carry-bags for all sort of purposes.
A roll of proper black garbage bags cost over K10 which people can’t afford and that’s why people reuse supermarket plastics as bin liners and rubbish bags.
Once free supermarket plastics are banned many households will have nothing to put their rubbish in and they will start throwing unwrapped rubbish into their bins and rubbish collection stands outside their homes which will lead to worse public hygiene risks and worse unsightly mess and smell in the streets.
The focus should be on switching to biodegradable ‘single use’ plastics because most of them will get re-used as garbage bags and end up decomposing at the rubbish dump not on the city streets.
Biodegradable bags are made from very thin plastic of a type that is oxidised and broken down when exposed to sunlight and air.
Yes they are still unsightly if thrown on the street but not for long.
The problem with plastic bags blowing around on the streets and in the waterways will only be solved when we stop selfish and careless people from littering.
To do this we need public awareness and social marketing campaigns, education programmes in schools to train the new generations not to litter, and CCTV cameras and police detecting litterers and enforcing litter laws.
Australians used to be terrible litterers until effective social marketing campaigns in the 1980’s and 1990’s with slogans like “Keep Australia Beautiful” and “Drop Something Sport?” have now made it socially unacceptable to drop litter.
It can work for PNG too.

Aaron Hayes,
Cairns Qld

One thought on “Set campaign on anti-littering

  • This is a grim picture of a community that is just plain lazy or not organised. Where are their councils and community leaders? As always there should be organised community work, a day, each week to clean up their backyards? People in this community/village like every other communities should have community days for various community projects. They need to come off their backsides and start taking ownership of their yards.

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