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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Jamaica to ban plastic lunch boxes starting June 1

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396 days ago
20240120

The tar­get date for the ban on plas­tic lunch box­es and per­son­al care prod­ucts with mi­croplas­tic beads is June 1.

This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter with­out Port­fo­lio in the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Growth and Job Cre­ation, Sen­a­tor Matthew Samu­da, dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion in the State of the Na­tion De­bate in the Sen­ate on Fri­day.

“We have tak­en the les­son of the first round of the plas­tic ban as it re­lates to pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and need to give suf­fi­cient lead time,” said Samu­da.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al pol­i­cy on the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound man­age­ment of sin­gle-use plas­tic prod­ucts is to be done this com­ing fis­cal year.

He said that Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness has al­ready said that a pro­gramme aimed at the sep­a­ra­tion of plas­tics and oth­er re­cy­clables in the min­istries, de­part­ments and agen­cies should com­mence this fis­cal year.

 Samu­da in­formed that Ja­maica cur­rent­ly col­lects more than 30 per cent of the plas­tic bot­tles pro­duced month­ly.

“We com­mend the NSWMA (Na­tion­al Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty) and Re­cy­cling Part­ners of Ja­maica, who have achieved this up from eight per cent three years ago,” he said.

“We are in a race against time to en­sure that we im­prove our waste man­age­ment tar­get, and one of the ways… is to en­sure we ex­tract plas­tic waste from the waste stream. We will con­tin­ue to work with stake­hold­ers to de­ter­mine the ap­pro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion nec­es­sary to achieve our goal. Our goal is not less than 70 per cent of all plas­tic be­ing pro­duced month­ly to be col­lect­ed and re­cy­cled for the ben­e­fit of Ja­maica,” Samu­da added.

He al­so said that Ja­maica is ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in ne­go­ti­a­tions for a legal­ly bind­ing in­stru­ment on plas­tic pol­lu­tion.

“In essence, the Paris Agree­ment re­lates to pol­lu­tion and specif­i­cal­ly plas­tic. Now, we don’t know where those ne­go­ti­a­tions will end up. We ob­vi­ous­ly have some in­sight as to where they are, but it is our in­ten­tion in Ja­maica to make sure that when­ev­er that is agreed, we are ahead of tar­gets and able to sign and rat­i­fy al­most im­me­di­ate­ly once that is agreed,” Samu­da said.

He added that the fight to halt bio­di­ver­si­ty loss and to tame pol­lu­tion will be un­der­pinned this year by a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease of fines both in the Nat­ur­al Re­sources Con­ser­va­tion Au­thor­i­ty (NR­CA) and Wildlife Pro­tec­tion Acts.

He said ad­di­tion­al de­tails will be pro­vid­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter in his Bud­get De­bate pre­sen­ta­tion.

Fur­ther­more, he said the Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Growth and Job Cre­ation, is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing amend­ments to sev­er­al pieces of sub­sidiary leg­is­la­tion un­der the NR­CA Act, name­ly: the Air Qual­i­ty Reg­u­la­tions, and the Waste­water and Sludge Reg­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Samu­da, the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Growth and Job Cre­ation will be work­ing with its agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­ment and Plan­ning Agency (NEPA), in the pro­mul­ga­tion of the out­stand­ing En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) Reg­u­la­tions un­der the NR­CA Act in the 2024/25 fis­cal year.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jan. 20, CMC – 

CMC/jm/kb/2024

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