The Malaysian Nature Society Selangor welcomes hypermarket Carrefour's decision to implement a ‘no plastic bag’ policy in three of its outlets in Malaysia in an effort to reduce use of throwaway plastic bags and eventually stop their free distribution altogether. This is the sort of meaningful first step that a supermarket chain can take in helping to alleviate one of the many serious environmental problems we face.

An enormous quantity of plastic bags are 'checked out' at the cashier from supermarkets every day and beyond that from retail outlets in general only to end up in landfills or incinerators or worse, in our waterways, seas and oceans. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide which is equivalent to over one million plastic bags a minute.

As a consumer, an individual may use as many as 100 plastic bags a month. Besides adding bulk to landfills (only a minuscule percentage of plastic bags are recycled because it generally costs more to recycle a plastic bag than to produce a new one), plastic bags - including the biodegradable ones - take a long time to degrade. And when they do, this can result in toxins that can find their way into the food chain.

There are already tens of thousands of plastic litter in every square mile of ocean. As a result, millions of marine animals and birds die each year from the choking or clogging of their intestines caused by plastic pollution.

When plastic bags are incinerated, highly toxic gases like dioxins can be produced. This is apart from the fact that about one million barrels of oil are required to produce the eight billion plastic bags that may be used in Malaysia each year.

The Malaysian Nature Society, therefore, applauds the leadership and courage that Carrefour is demonstrating in seeking to address a very serious problem. We look forward to seeing this practice extended to every Carrefour outlet.

We would also urge the other supermarket chains as well as the retail industry as a whole to take similar action to address a serious menace to our environment.

The government has also a leading role to play. The countries in our part of the world that have already banned or taken steps to actively discourage the use of plastic bags include Singapore, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.

Equally, we would also like to urge consumers when shopping to use reusable bags or reuse plastic bags as many times as possible before disposing them with due care.

The Malaysian Nature Society would also like to see the reduction and eventual halt of the sale of water in disposable plastic water bottles. Most plastic water bottles are not recycled but trashed, and many of them end up in our drains, rivers and oceans.

These bottles, normally made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), take between 400 to1,000 years to degrade and every ton of PET manufactured produces about three tons of Co2, a greenhouse gas. These bottles would be unnecessary if we just carried reusable bottles that we filled with drinking water.

State or local authorities may also consider following the example of the Australian town of Bundanoon which in July 2009, banned bottled water and replaced it with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains inside the town’s shops or at water stations in the streets.

As Carrefour Malaysia CEO Guillaume de Colonges said, Carrefour has the advantage of a large consumer base and as such, it can make an impact in promoting public awareness on the need to protect and conserve our environmental heritage. Might Carrefour take the lead on phasing out the sale of bottled water from its shelves?

The writer is chairperson, Malaysian Nature Society, Selangor branch.