Over RM200,000 collected from No Plastic Bag Campaign

KOTA KINABALU: More than RM200,000 was collected from the fees charged on plastic bags at various outlets in the city from June 2010 until December 2012.

The actual figure of RM206,774.01 was accumulated from 225 outlets that participated in the campaign to reduce the use of plastic bags.

Participants consisted of 26 supermarkets, a clinic, nine schools, two institutions of higher learning, 50 pharmacies and seven associations.

Charges collected by the Environmental Action Centre (EAC) from June to December 2010 was RM43,690.05 and from January to December last year, it was RM163,083.95.
KFC Sabah recorded the highest amount collected with a total of RM100,532.60, said Mayor Datuk Abidin Madingkir.

He was speaking at a press conference on the campaign to reduce the use of plastic bags at the City Hall premises here yesterday.

Also present were the City Hall director general, who is also the Kota Kinabalu EAC chairman, Datuk Yeo Boon Hai, City Hall director of health and services, Robert Lipon, KFC Sabah operations manager, Godfrey Binting, Sabah EAC coordinator, Anzella Juwilin, as well as representatives of the participating supermarkets.
At the event, KFC Sabah also presented a cheque, for the amount they collected, to the Sabah EAC.

Abidin said, although a lot of money was collected from the campaign, it was not something they could be proud of because it showed that the campaign still did not get the full participation of the community.

“We will carry on with the campaign and urge more outlets to take part. The objective of the campaign is to reduce the use of plastic bags and to get people to become more environmentally aware,” he added.

The campaign was officially launched on 7 June 2010 by the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Masidi Manjun at the Sunny Supermarket in Tanjung Aru. Initially, it was enforced only on Mondays with the slogan “Bring Your Own Bag”. Customers would be charged 20 sen for each plastic bag they requested at participating outlets. The money is then given to the Sabah EAC for environmental programmes.

However, on 1 January 2011, the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Co-operative and Consumerism launched a similar campaign to take effect every Saturday nationwide.

City Hall then decided to enforce the “Bring Your Own Bag” theme on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays to fill the gap between Saturday and Monday.

Meanwhile, Abidin said that the meeting with the supermarkets was meant to iron out any problems the outlets might have had during the campaign.

“Apparently, some customers became angry when they were charged 20 sen for the plastic bags and it impacted badly on business because they lost customers on those days that the campaign was enforced.

There were also complaints about the payment counters being narrow and late collections,” said the Mayor.
The City Hall intends to further promote the campaign and the Sabah EAC has promised to make collections on time.

“I sincerely hope that people in Kota Kinabalu will continue to support this campaign for the sake of our environment. I also thank all those who took part and supported the campaign,” said Abidin.

Source: http://www.newsabahtimes.com.my/nstweb/fullstory/55492

Green Sabah says: The No Plastic Bags Campaign is a good move to encourage the locals to reduce the use of plastic bags while shopping. Plastic bags are one of the contributors for massive landfills world wide, if we do not start controlling the use of these plastic bags, it is possible that our grand children's generation will be forced to live in landfills. I have noticed more people are carrying green bags while shopping nowadays, I've even seen some who brought their own Tupperware to restaurants for takeaways, which is a better alternative for their health and reduce the use of polystyrene. Hopefully more people will participate in this campaign.