The new year is set to be a whole lot greener for Malacca, as the state government has announced that from January 1 onwards, all supermarkets and shopping malls will be prohibited from supplying shoppers with plastic bags made from petroleum by-products.
“From January 1, consumers will have bring along their own shopping bags or the cash counters will supply them with biodegradable bags made of plant-based materials,” Malacca’s Education, Higher Education, Science and Technology, Green Technology and Innovation chairperson Md Yunos Husin said on Tuesday.
The state-wide policy will also require hawkers to no longer use polystyrene packaging.
The new policy is an expansion of Malacca’s existing policy of imposing a “No Plastic Bag Day” every Friday and Saturday.
Yunos said that the move was in line with the Malacca state government’s aim to reduce wastage and to set up the state as a bastion of green technology.
“Our landfills and drains are filled with paper bags and this doesn’t serve our ambitious plan to be a fully green state,” he told The Star Online‘s RSN Murali.
To offset the ban on plastic bags, the Malacca Bio-Technology Corporation will start supplying biodegradable plastic bags and food containers to shopping malls and eateries.
“We have also suggested to the state government to look into a mechanism where the fee for yearly business licences could be reduced for hawkers adopting green packaging,” said Malacca Bio-Technology Corp CEO Badrul Hisham Badrudin.
