The Senate on Friday passed a timely resolution that seeks Government intervention into reducing the use of plastic bags and styrofoam containers and their threat to the environment.

Government Senator Matthew Samuda moved the private member motion on July 1, asking that Jamaica ban the importation of plastic bags below 50-gallon capacity and all finished goods made from styrofoam; and curtail the production of those items in Jamaica, unless they include an enzyme capable of making them biodegradable.

Biodegradable plastic is an innovative means of solving the plastic disposal problem.

Samuda said this is necessary because Jamaica has a waste management problem due to poor dumping habits and inadequate resources, and many of the items entering the waste stream are non-biodegradable.

Opposition Senators Angela Brown Burke and Sophia Binns Liburd supported the objective of the motion, but made suggestions as how it could be improved, primarily through increased public education and wider participation of the stakeholders in making decisions.

Opposition member Lambert Brown suggested that with no alternative to the use of plastic proposed in the motion, there could be a return to the use of high-cost cardboard boxes.

“We can’t just stop the progress,” he said, adding that the motion also ignored the efforts that have already been made to deal with the dangers of plastic, including a pilot project in lower St Andrew.

He noted that in 2014, former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, to find a solution to the problem, opened a recycling plant on Spanish Town Road that employed 100 people by “encouraging entrepreneurship”.

“I think it is important for us to recognise that there are opportunities arising from the problems of plastic and styrofoam,” he said.

Brown proposed that the motion be sent to a joint select committee of Parliament for discussions.

Samuda assured Brown that the workers and the manufacturers need not worry, because the motion “would not end up as a talk shop”.

“Our Government is not a piecemeal government so there will not be piecemeal solutions. But it is precisely because the time is now and because we feel that action must be taken now,” Samuda responded.

He said that the major point of disagreement was where the resolution would be referred after passage, considering the support for it on both sides of the Senate.

He said that the Government would prefer the suggestion from Senator Binns for a stakeholders’ committee to discuss the effects of a ban on the plastics/styrofoam industry and related matters.

Samuda added that this would not mean ignoring parliamentary participation, as Government and the Opposition would be represented on the stakeholders’ committee, and the minister with responsibility for the environment would keep them apprised of the progress it was making.

Leader of Opposition Business Senator Mark Golding said that the Opposition felt that the proper place for the review to be done would be in a parliamentary committee.

“Not in some multi-stakeholder body outside of Parliament. That’s a big point for us but it hasn’t been accepted,” Golding conceded.

The motion was passed without any votes against, and is expected to be forwarded to the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation for implementation.

 

Source : jamaicaobserver.com

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