In Kiev, plastic bags will be banned: details

The Standing Committee of the Kiev Council on Environmental Policy agreed on a draft decision on limiting the use of plastic bags in stores.

“According to the draft decision, the Kyiv City Council will recommend businesses in the sphere of trade and services to offer buyers an alternative to disposable plastic bags, such as biological polymer or paper bags, multiple bags and the like,” the ministry’s press service said.

The draft decision notes that in many countries laws have been adopted or are being developed that prohibit the use of polymers. In return, consumers are offered paper bags that are completely safe for humans. For example, in France, at the legislative level, they decided to completely abandon polyethylene. The stores were given a three-month postponement so that they could buy paper bags and linen bags.

“According to official data, 8 billion packages are provided annually in the trash bin on the scale of the EU, on average, an EU citizen uses about 200 plastic bags a year, usually only once, many of which later appear in the world’s oceans with catastrophic consequences for the marine fauna because polyethylene is practically not decomposed and not digested, in addition, they are collected by currents in huge “garbage spots” of several hundred thousand square kilometers, “the author of the project, Konstantin Yalova, said.

He added that the regulatory legal acts of Ukraine do not provide for the prohibition of legal bodies, as well as the definition of the liability measure of business entities for violation of such regulations.

Yalovoy suggested first of all to solve the issue of prohibiting the use and sale of plastic bags centrally at the state level. Therefore, the decision of the city council, if it is supported by deputies in the plenary session, will have a recommendation character.

As reported by the “Observer”, in December 2017, the Department of Landscaping KSCA supported the petition, which proposes to ban disposable plastic bags in Kiev.