The new policy includes an awareness drive to encourage consumers towards sustainability…reports Asian Lite News
Single-use plastic bags will be charged 25fils at checkout counters in all stores in Dubai from July 1 onwards, The Executive Council tweeted on Monday.
The move comes “to limit single-use bags to enhance environmental sustainability”, it said. Restaurants, pharmacies and e-commerce deliveries are included in the new rule.
As a subsequent step, the policy will be evaluated over several stages until single-use carrier bags are completely banned within a span of two years, following the assessment of behavioral changes in the community.
The new policy includes an awareness drive to encourage consumers towards sustainability.
The council said that according to a survey, 50 per cent of the community segregates waste in their homes today. It added that support for changing practices around the use of single-use plastic bags, whether by introducing a total ban or the imposition of a traffic, has reached 85 per cent of the emirate’s community, including all nationalities and 100 per cent of businesses.
Over the years, the public and private sector in the UAE have introduced several initiatives to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags.
Businesses are prohibited from printing on non-biodegradable plastic bags. Some supermarkets offer shoppers reusable bags – made of cloth, jute or insulation materials – at nominal cost to offset the use of disposable plastic bags. A few of them had even charged for the use of plastic bags.