(MENAFN- Pajhwok Afghan News) KABUL (Pajhwok): The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday expressed concern about negative effects of plastic bags on the environment and human health, saying four tons of plastic bags were used on a daily basis in capital Kabul alone.
Ghulam Mohammad Malakyar, deputy environment protection head, while marking World Environment Day, warned about dangerous impacts of plastic pollution on the environment.
He expressed concern about high use of plastic bags in the country and said their estimation showed Kabul alone used four tons of plastic bags a day. €œUsing this amount of plastic for a city like Kabul is like a disaster,€ he said.
Malakyar said world€™s statistics showed a million plastic bags were sold in a minute while five billion of such bags were used in a year.
€œPlastic bags take 100 years to break down in the environment€, he added. €œWe can reduce or even prevent the use of plastic bags by applying different ways, first of all we should avoid using plastic, aware people about its risks, collect them from streets and use cloth bags for carrying our goods.€
Malakyar said there were no cultural or legal policies on reducing plastic bags use, but the public needed not to use them for environment protection and their personal health.
Mohammad Yaqob Haidari, Kabul governor, also expressed concern about what he said excessive use of plastic bags in the capital and said: €œWe should not play with our environment, using plastic bags is playing with our own fate and environment.€
He said 4.5 tons of garbage was currently dumped east of Kabul and collection and transfer of each ton cost much money.
€œIf there is a good program, the money used for collection and transfer of garbage can be used for opening a factory of recycling them€, he said.
He warned municipality officials would be taken to justice if they ignored the government€™s latest chance for recycling garbage.
Ahmad Behzad Gheyasi, municipality€™s cleanliness head, has previously said that they were working on a program for collection and separation of garbage in some parts of Kabul and they would sign contacts with private companies for recycling if their plan succeeded.
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