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Going green: Eco packaging to the fore

19 Feb 2022

  • 2017 polythene ban to be enforced this year
  • Risk of fraudulent bio-degradable polythene in market
  • Over 2,300 raids, resulting in 130 cases in Court: CEA 
By Uwin Lugoda  The Government is set to continue its push towards a greener Sri Lanka by bringing in a ban against polythene packaging in 2022, The Sunday Morning learns.  According to the Ministry of Environment, the significant decrease in the use of polythene packaging such as ‘lunch sheets’ in the last few months is proof of the current ban’s effectiveness. As such, the ban on the unnecessary use of this material and the import of the machines that produce such packaging material has been carried into 2022, with raids still taking place across the country.  Ministry Secretary Dr. Anil Jasinghe stated that the initial ban on polythene packaging took place in 2017. However, he stated that this law had never been properly enforced, leading to little change until its reimplementation in August 2021.  “The goal of this ban and its re-enforcement was to replace the current polythene lunch sheets with more biodegradable ones, such as banana leaves,” said Jasinghe. This reimplementation led to raids taking place from 1 August last year on shops, boutiques, and manufacturers of the sheets, resulting in the seizing of polythene packaging and its subsequent destruction.  Ministry data showcased that pollution by polythene lunch sheets is a prevalent issue in the country, making it a major culprit in the pollution crisis. It was further highlighted that about 5,475 million polythene lunch sheets are released into the environment each year without recycling.  The number of these lunch sheets released into the environment per day is around 15 million. Moreover, research has shown that lunch sheets take between 100 and 200 years to completely decompose.  Raids on fraudulent manufacturers “Conducting raids on polythene lunch sheet manufacturers is not easy. The machine they use is so small that it can fit in a room, making this a domestic enterprise. But the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) has been conducting raids on moderate-sized manufacturers and lunch sheet storage units in Pettah since last August,” explained Jasinghe.  He stated that they had seen a positive impact following the ban and the raids, and the entry penetration of biodegradable lunch sheets to the market. However, he explained that this could not be quantified since most of the polythene lunch sheet used was in the informal sector.  “Our ban is not 100%; biodegradable sheets are a little more expensive than polythene and people opt to use the latter. This is mostly in the informal sector because we cannot control them the way we can the formal sector. But enterprises such as all the supermarket chains now only sell biodegradable sheets.”  Speaking to The Sunday Morning, CEA’s Director of Solid Waste Management Sarojini Jayasekera confirmed that continuous raids were being carried out in relation to polythene lunch sheets. She explained that while they expected a reduction in the unnecessary use of lunch sheets, the public had replaced the polythene sheets with biodegradable sheets.  “The use of biodegradable sheets is better, but the issue now is that we have also found fraudulent manufacturers selling polythene lunch sheets as biodegradable ones. Therefore, we are carrying out frequent raids to find these fraudulent manufacturers who are not complying with the law,” said Jayasekera.  She stated that following these raids, any stock of polythene lunch sheets would be seized and destroyed, while the manufacturers would be taken to Court.  Jayasekera explained that in 2021 the CEA conducted over 2,300 plus raids with regard to polythene lunch sheets and packaging, with 130 Court cases filed. She explained that the number of raids was limited last year due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and stated that the CEA generally conducts around 10,000 raids a year. According to Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera, eight alternatives to lunch sheets have been identified, including natural packaging such as banana leaves and lotus leaves, as well as other environmentally-friendly forms of packaging. Adoption by the public Piyaratne, the owner of a small-scale rice and curry restaurant in Ethul Kotte, stated that his business had completely switched to using banana leaves as natural packaging since September 2021. He explained that two weeks prior to his switch, two Government agents had visited his establishment to notify him of the law and its enforcement. “Two Government officials came to my restaurant and looked into our use of polythene lunch sheets. They then informed me about the new law and advised me on all the potential packaging alternatives. I saw banana leaves as the best option since the rest were more expensive and harder to come by.” Another roadside vendor, Costa, who sells lunch packets in Nawala, made a similar switch to banana leaf packaging early last year. He stated that this switch to alternative packaging came after seeing the environmental impact of polythene lunch sheets, long before the Government’s enforcement of the law. “I used to wrap my rice packets in polythene before, but I saw my lunch sheets being thrown into the drains after use. I wanted to help stop this, so in January last year I switched to banana leaves. This is not only a good alternative to polythene lunch sheets, my food also tastes better coming from a natural container rather than an artificial one.” Meanwhile, online shopping site Daraz has also introduced banana packaging as a replacement for polythene lunch sheets, adding convenience to consumers looking for greener options.  

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