Yesterday, we told you about the department of the environment's crackdown on single use plastics - which should have already been phased out.
But, it's not that easy - and that's because there's a profit incentive to deal in single use, non biodegradable plastics.
Those can be bought more cheaply and then be sold for a larger profit - because the biodegradable products have set the market price much higher than it used to be.
We asked the Chief environmental Officer about that:
Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer "So indeed, we do know exactly what is going on in the sector. In fact, we have meetings with the importers, and we have had wide open discussion on issues affecting the importers."
"And so what we did is we listened to the importers, we know what the challenges are. And we prepared a cabinet paper which hopefully will be sent or tabled today, with some recommendation of how to strengthen the entire initiative."
"We do have a strong commitment to recommit, right? Even though we have committed just to restate that our commitment is still strong in relation to this plastics initiative."
"We have spoken to we have contact with all the importers and large, medium and small importers. And so they have made certain commitments to us as well in terms of understanding the importance of the initiative being an environmental improvement or benefit."
"It has environmental benefits. They understand that issue. The issue for them, as any regular business person, is the cost analysis that goes along with that. So, as you rightly said, the cost of purchasing and importing biodegradable products that meet our national standard is higher than buying the products that are not meeting the standard."
Jules Vasquez "You all are aware that there is a perverse incentive to smuggling the, the are the single use plastics because there's an opportunity margin that has been created by these more expensive, biodegradable counterparts."
Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer "We believe that the enforcement that we're doing now will curb that activity. So, for example, if you, Jules, you own a supermarket and someone comes to you and sell you products in terms of single use products, if we the DOE go to your facility and charge you for having these products on your shelves and selling these products, and then the person comes back to you and want to sell you these products, they will obviously say no."
"And so then if a supermarket, for argument's sake, or a violator continues to be disrespectful and violate the law, at some point in time, a recommendation will be made to the magistrate for these persons to be in prison."
"And once the general public understands and the business community understand that we are serious about enforcing the law, it will curb that, that that that reality that you just mentioned, that issue."
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Yesterday, we told you about the department of the environment's crackdown on single use plastics - which should have already been phased out.
"And so what we did is we listened to the importers, we know what the challenges are. And we prepared a cabinet paper which hopefully will be sent or tabled today, with some recommendation of how to strengthen the entire initiative."