The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Super Value’s president is urging the government to clarify how it will tackle leftover single-use plastic products as the full ban on their use takes effect today.

Rupert Roberts told Tribune Business he was unsure whether the Department of Environmental Health Services (DEHS) “drop off” site for remaining banned plastics and styrofoam products will be big enough to cope with what is left given that the COVID-19 pandemic prevented merchants running down their stocks.

“I think the public and merchants don’t know what to do other than stop selling them for 25 cents,” he said. “I have only 14m [plastic bags] left. They cannot be talking a 10 x 10 room. We cut our order in half, thought that was our usage, and were left high and dry when we had to charge 25 cents.

“They don’t have a facility to hold all this material that is left over. We’ll see what they come up with. We’ll do nothing until they contact us.”

Mr Roberts added that the government “should so what they should have done in the first place” and ban further imports of single-use plastics and styrofoam products, while merchants and consumers ran down and eliminated their existing inventories.

However, other food stores said they had eliminated their plastic bag stocks ahead of the full ban coming into effect today.

Macnair Beneby, general manager or Courtesy Supermarket, told Tribune Business: “We don’t have any more plastic bags in stock. We were prepared for this from the beginning of the year. We knew we had six months to get rid our supplies so we did. I think we got rid of the last set at the end of May.

“Right now people are either bringing in their bags or we have the reusable bags for sale. Sometimes we have a few of the paper bags for the small items, but for the most part we are using the reusable bags.”

The government passed the Environmental Protection (Control of Plastic Pollution) Act 2019 to ban the importation of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam containers on December 30, 2019.

Business owners were mandated to sell their remaining stock for 25 cents per bag until the June 30, 2020, deadline for the full scale, countrywide ban on the use of plastic bags and Styrofoam containers took effect.

Cyril Carey, general manager of Kenneth’s Food Store on Prince Charles Drive, added: “I got rid of all of my plastic bags. Shoppers have to bring the reusable bags now and we also have them for sale, too.”

“I knew it was coming so I started to scale back on placing my orders. I was out from March. I depleted my supplies of plastic bags from then. I have one or two pieces of the styrofoam left lying around, but I guess I have to dump them. I have a case of 400 pieces, for the ones people use for the breakfast.”

Atwell Ferguson, general manager of Golden Gates Supermarket, said: “We had no choice but to make that switch over, so we that will be it. We don’t have anything left in stock and we are just using the brown paper bags right now.”