Mozambican Minister of Land and Environment Ivete Maibasse announced Friday that the institution plans to submit a law aiming to ban the use of plastic bags in the country as an effort to reduce harmful practices to public health, infrastructures and the environment.
The private sector will be given one year to prepare before the law is fully implemented, and there will also be some exceptions, said the minister during the opening of the National Council for Sustainable Development in Maputo.
“Exceptions will be for plastic bags used for food package, for conditioning solid waste as well as for the health, mining, agriculture and construction sectors,” said Maibasse.
He said the ban will also exclude the plastic bags produced in the special economic zones as long as they are for export purposes.
In a previous campaign conducted to reduce the use of plastic bags in the country from 2015 to 2017, the ministry reportedly collected about 7,000 tons of plastic bags from warehouses and markets, which later were transformed into hoses, buckets and bowls for charity institutions.
