Kigali municipal authorities on Monday warned residents that single use plastic bottles discarded by the side of some main and secondary roads should from now on be disposed in the recycling bin to avoid administrative sanctions for breach of new instructions.
Single-use plastic materials include, plastic bottles, drinking straws, plates and cups, cutlery, take-away containers, and shrink wraps for secondary packaging of goods.
The new waste management measures to enhance disposal, encourage reuse and recycling, and promote alternatives to plastic products, the City of Kigali said in a warning Monday.
Currently plastic packaging is mostly single-use, especially in business-to-consumer applications for many food processing factories in Rwanda.
The latest ban is supported by the law N° 17/2019 of 10/08/2019 relating to the prohibition of manufacturing, importation, use and sale of plastic carry bags and single-use plastic items.
The law has listed the names of single use plastic items under the ban whose dealers have been given a three-month grace period to phase them out.
The Government’s Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) estimates show that most of plastic items end up in landfills, rivers, lakes, oceans, waterways, and the environment and they do not biodegrade.
The single-use plastic items pollute the environment such as blocking water channels and preventing water from penetrating into the soil, affects biodiversity in the water bodies (lakes, rivers etc); clogging water drainage systems and thus triggering flooding, it said.
Climate Change experts said that the ban of single use plastic items have a significant impact on environment, economy and health in Rwanda.
CU/as/APA