Egypt attempts to reduce the consumption of its single use plastic bags
In the context of the Fourteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Sharm El Sheikh, the Ministry of Environment in cooperation with the Center for Environment and Development of the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) organized, on 21st November 2018, an awareness raising session on "Reducing the consumption of single use plastic bags".
The session had interventions from Engineer Maysoun Nabil, SwitchMed focal point and of Dr. Hossam Allam, Coordinator for the SwitchMed project to reduce the consumption of plastic bags. It further saw the participation of a number of delegations taking part in the fourteenth Biodiversity conference.
The session aimed to shed light on the risks of single-use plastic bags as one of the most dangerous environmental pollutants, a threat to biodiversity and its negative impacts on the environmental, health, economic and even social levels.
The meeting also reviewed the national initiative to reduce the consumption of plastic bags as a pilot experiment in Egypt to protect biodiversity as well as the importance of concerted efforts of the society as a whole to enable these initiatives to change behavior and consumer patterns to environmentally compatible methods that seek to participate in the protection of the environment and biodiversity.
The session included the presentation of several types of multi-use bags made of fabrics prepared by the initiative as an example of sustainable alternatives that are practical and easy to trade and contribute to reduce the consumption of disposable plastic bags and to protect the environment.
The session has also invited participants to promote the switch from plastic bags to environmentally friendly bags and hence preserving biodiversity and living organisms. Environmental-friendly bags were distributed as a gift to all participants.