Transcript
The secretary of the Fuel Retailer Association, John Philp said each year approximately four and a half million plastic bags are used at convenience stores located at fuel service stations across the country.
He says with the imposition of the charge, they hope to reduce that number by half, meaning less going into the environment or being thrown on the road or wherever people dispose of it.
An environmentalist in Fiji, Adrian Midwood, is the director of Ocean Ambassadors.
He says Fiji has had a big plastic problem for decades and it's great to see a surcharge finally being implemented as a deterrent.
"By directly hitting the pocket of the consumer I think we actually have a chance of minimising the plastic bags waste that's going onto the beach which ends up in our oceans and affects our marine wildlife. They have been starting to use biodegradable additives in plastic means that means it is breaking down a lot quicker, but it doesn't mean that they are actually compostable or plant-based and so the ingestion of these plastic bags is affecting marine life astronomically really."
The chief executive of Fiji Consumer Council Premila Kumar is concerned that biodegradable plastic bags are dearer than the standard plastic bags.
She says there are also big issues with plastic wrapping in supermarkets and shops, but the surcharge will hopefully encourage responsible consumerism.
"We are talking about one time use shopping bags and I have not seen any major exceptions except among some politician, but within the communities, no one has actually raised it with the council."
Premila Kumar also worked as an environmentalist, saying the surcharge is a good start.
"Because I used to work for environment before I took this job and I conducted a study on the use of plastic shopping bags, and back then we established, this was back in 1999, that the minimum number of bags we were using was 1.3 million bags, yeah minimum. Maximum we don't know but minimum we established and so that number must have definitely increased."
Pacific Islands Development Forum's Team Leader Programme Management, Mark Borg, says it is important for Fiji to take a step towards reducing plastic waste.
He says regionally his organisation's role is to promote the green economy, and to ensure businesses operate in a way that's friendly to people and the environment.
"The private sector has a responsibility to the planet and people and we know that biz can still make profits and possibly even increase their profits through a biz model that is friendly to people and its environment and packaging is of course an important component for both the retailer and manufacturing industries and we need to move slowly towards a greener economy and address those packaging practises that do not fit a greener economy."
People are also being encouraged to use biodegradable bags or reusable non-plastic bags when the surcharge is implemented on August 1.
