Tanzania to ban plastic bags in bid to tackle pollution
Tourists visiting Tanzania are being urged to remove plastic bags from their luggage after the East African nation implemented a ban aimed at tackling pollution and protecting the environment.
Airline passengers have been told to remove the non-recyclable plastic carriers before arriving – although “ziplock” bags used as part of airport security procedures are still permitted.
Tanzania joins a growing list of countries around the world which have implemented a bag ban, with Africa often leading the way in tackling plastic waste.
The ban, which comes into effect on 1 June, targets all plastic bags “imported, exported, manufactured, sold, stored, supplied and used”.
Tanzania has toyed with a blanket ban in the past, having outlawed plastic bags on the semi-autonomous Zanzibar islands in 2006 and announced proposals for a country-wide ban in 2015.
Neighbouring Kenya banned plastic bags in 2017, with those caught manufacturing or carrying the single use items facing up to four years in prison or a fine.
Rwanda, South Africa and Eritrea are among the more than 30 sub-Saharan African nations to have their own plastic bag bans; the former insists on bag searches for travellers entering the country.
Before Mauritania’s ban was implemented in 2013, around three-quarters of all the cattle and sheep killed in the capital, Nouakchoot, were said to have died from eating plastic waste.
Bangladesh was the first country to implement a ban in 2002, followed by China, the Netherlands, Israel, Morocco and Albania, among others.
But the scope of each nation’s ban differs. In China, which lacks a blanket ban, bags less than 0.025mm thick are outlawed and shops and food markets are banned from handing out free bags.
In Botswana, the government reversed a decision to ban plastic bags barely two weeks after it was implemented last November after complaints from manufacturers that their views had not been taken into consideration.
It comes as two major Asian economies revealed plans to return plastic waste shipped from overseas.
Malaysia last year became the leading alternative destination for plastic after China banned imports of such waste, disrupting the flow of more than seven million tonnes a year.
Most of the plastic scrap coming into the country is contaminated and low-quality plastic from developed countries that is non-recyclable.
Now, Kuala Lumpur has begun sending back the waste to its country of origin, said Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia's environment minister.
And Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered his government to hire a private shipping company to send 69 containers of rubbish back to Canada and leave them within its territorial waters if it refuses to accept the waste.
In 2014 seven major retailers issued 7.6 billion single-use bags but the number was down to just over a billion in 2017-18.
