{"id":327553,"date":"2019-07-05T08:21:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T06:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=327553"},"modified":"2019-07-05T08:21:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T06:21:31","slug":"south-africa-to-review-its-policy-on-plastics-including-a-possible-straw-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/327553\/south-africa-to-review-its-policy-on-plastics-including-a-possible-straw-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa to review its policy on plastics &#8211; including a possible straw ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Environmental Affairs is currently reviewing its policy on single-use plastics and hopes to complete this process by the end of this financial year, says environment minister Barbara Creecy, replying in a parliamentary Q&amp;A session this week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a matter of public record that the management of plastics in the world generally, and in our own country, is sub-optimal,&#8221; Creecy said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Consequently, this is an important area to which we must respond if we are to protect our oceans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The minister said that the review will include discussions with the retail, pharmaceutical and cosmetics sectors as well as the paper and packaging industries on ways to combat the use of one time plastics and their disposal management.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ban on straws<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In February, the Department of Environmental Affairs <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/302292\/south-africa-is-looking-at-introducing-a-national-plastic-straw-ban\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said<\/a> <\/strong>that it was in talks to phase out or completely ban plastic products like straws and microbeads in the country.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mark Gordon, the department\u2019s deputy director-general for chemical and waste management, the single-use products are considered to be unfriendly to the environment.<\/p>\n<p>He added that single-use plastic products like earbuds, straws, stirrers, table cups, tableware and polystyrene packaging were especially harmful to the marine sector.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have started a discussion document that we have shared with a number of stakeholders and we are in the process of inviting comments around it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we presented previously around this on what would be their replacements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that to some extent there has been a replacement of plastic straws with paper straws and I am not sure if everybody likes it. There are bamboo straws, there are stainless steel reusable straws,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/326663\/pick-n-pay-trials-plastic-and-packaging-free-fruit-and-veg-section\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pick n Pay trials plastic and packaging-free fruit and veg section<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Environmental Affairs is currently reviewing its policy on single-use plastics and hopes to complete this process by the end of this financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":280463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-327553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327553"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327571,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327553\/revisions\/327571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}