Mitigating White Pollution

According to scientists, plastic bags are almost indecomposable. When they are discharged into the environment, it takes them decades to centuries to be completely biodegradable in nature. Their existence in the environment will cause serious impacts to soil and water because plastic bags prevent the movement of oxygen in soil, and cause soil erosion, loss of water and nutrients in soil. These slow down the growth of plants. Worse, soil and water contaminated by plastic bags will directly and indirectly harm human health. Environmental pollution caused by plastic wastes is called "white pollution" by environmentalists.

 

For the time being, Vietnam has no clean energy recycling facilities and the people’s sense of waste classification remains low. To minimise the use of plastic bags and heighten the sense of people, the Government has recently proposed the Law on Environmental Protection Tax under which plastic bags are subjected to highest taxes of VND30,000 - 40,000 per kilo. This law will take effect on January 1, 2012.

 

According to this law, plastic bags are unfriendly to environment; thus they will be levied environmental tariffs. Environmentalists believe this is a correct decision but how the law helps limit the use of plastic bags remains controversial. Many package companies have raised voice against this ecotax because there are no specific criteria for these products and there are no bases for determine whether plastic bags are environmentally friendly or not. This is a pressing concern of environment-friendly plastic manufacturers especially when production costs for this kind of bags are higher than other ones by several times. Companies actually need State policy supports to produce environmentally friendly products.

 

Dr Phung Chi Sy, Deputy Director of the Institute for Tropical Technology and Environmental Protection (VITTEP), said: Tax on environmentally unfriendly plastic bags is a right approach. He said tax remains low because production costs of plastic bags are humble. Currently, a kilo of plastic bags are dozens of thousands of Vietnamese dong. Although tax is added, a kilo of nylon bas is still less than VND100,000. This price rate is not high for many consumers and businesses. Hence, Dr Sy recommended that while imposing green tax on environmentally unfriendly plastic bags, the State should encourage companies to study, invest and produce environment-friendly products. The public should be advised not to use environmentally unfriendly nylon bags.

 

However, as tax rates are low and production costs are small, traders may add the tax they should incur to selling prices of products. Then, buyers are taxpayers and the objective of shrinking production of environmentally unfriendly plastic bags is unreachable.

 

Together with State regulations, raising the public awareness of mitigating white pollution is an important task. Recently, the General Department of Environment launched a seminar on “Controlling environmental pollution caused by indecomposable plastic bags” in Ho Chi Minh City beside a dozen of campaigns concerning the limited use of plastic bags for the purpose of environmental protection.