Environment ministry to activate regulating plastic marketing bags system upon pandemic’s end

AMMAN — The Ministry of Environment talks about activating a system to regulate plastic marketing bags after the pandemic is over.

Environment Ministry Secretary General Mohammad Khashashneh, on Wednesday, spoke about the activation of the “System of Regulation of Decomposable Plastic Marketing Bags” issued in 2017 after the end of the COVID pandemic.

The secretary general also said, during a programme hosted by Almamlaka, that the instructions for bags used in bakeries are not included in the framework of this system and are subjected to special instructions issued by the Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).

He added that these bags must be made of raw, non-recycled materials, and must not interact with the food material, which are the instructions for packaging food items, including bread.

“The pandemic delayed these actions,” Khashashneh noted.

He pointed out that the use of paper bags in packaging fields was an issue promoted by the ministry both through the Plastic Shopping Bags System and through the newly enacted 2020 Waste Management Framework Law to reduce, control, and recycle waste circulation in general.

Plastic bags are becoming a burden on the environment, and the amount of plastic is increasing, tens of billions of tonnes are being pumped into the world markets every year and a large part of them is going into the environment, the secretary general noted.

He added that there is a growing island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, and every minute it increases by about 20 tonnes, and if it stays that way by the year 2050, the size of the plastic in the oceans will be more than the fish.

“All of this in correspond with the ministry principles that is also encouraging the implementation of rotating economic principles,” he noted.

He noted that the ministry also participated in “finding environmental solutions to settle the work of the rotating economy in the margins of the G-20 summit, which is at the top of the world 20’s largest economies, this was last Thursday which was called the global solution summit”.