Maputo — Maputo Municipal Council plans, in the near future, to ban the production and use of plastic bags in the city, according to the City Councillor for Health, Joao Schwalbach.

With this move, Maputo will join a growing number of cities and countries which have declared war on the menace of the plastic bag. China, for example, has banned the use of plastic shopping bags, and the Chinese authorities have calculated that this will save 37 million barrels of oil a year.

Once viewed as simply a convenient way to carry purchases, the plastic bag is now an eyesore, littering the streets of Maputo. After any strong wind, large numbers of plastic bags end up draped over trees. They are a menace to wild life, and can kill the creatures that accidentally ingest them.

Banning plastic bags will reduce the costs of cleaning Maputo, and will help stop drains from becoming clogged with bits of plastic every time it rains.

Schwalbach told AIM that it recent years there had been an "unimaginable proliferation of plastic". The Municipal Council had thus sent a proposal to the Environment Ministry for an outright ban on plastic bags.

He stressed that the ban would not cover other forms of plastic. He had no problem with plastic furniture, buckets or other items, which could be collected and recycled.

But the thin plastic bags which all shops seem to imagine that consumers want were just a nuisance. "When I buy a banana, they put it in a plastic bag", he exclaimed. "When I buy half a banana, they put it in a plastic bag. This is ridiculous!"

Furthermore, many of the bags used by Maputo shops are of extremely poor quality, and cannot be used more than once. Often the bag is torn even before the customer has made it home from the shop. As a result, such bags are immediately discarded, and those that end up on the streets are picked up by the wind and blown across the city.

Asked whether the Council had not considered fiscal measures instead, such as increasing duties on imported plastic bags, Scwalbach dismissed such palliatives. "No", he said, "our proposal is purely and simply to outlaw thin plastic. Thicker types of plastic are another matter, because they are more useful and can be recycled. We are already recycling this type of plastic".

Schwalbach was sure that the central government will welcome the Council's proposal. He said that Environment Minister Alcinda Abreu had received the proposal enthusiastically.

Initially, the Council had considered passing a by-law, banning plastic bags in Maputo. The Council has the power to do this, and would not need approval from the central government. However, legal advisors warned the Council of the difficulties of enforcing a law restricted only to Maputo. What, for instance would happen if plastic bags were outlawed in Maputo but not in the neighbouring city of Matola?

So the Council was persuaded to propose that the Environment Ministry issue a decree banning plastic bags throughout the country. "What we want to do is solve the problem", declared Schwalbach. "We don't care whether the solution comes from above or below".

Schwalbach said that the municipality has set up a plastics recycling factory, Recicla, which is fully operational and employs 20 people, 10 men and 10 women, whom the council had recruited from among the garbage scavengers living and working amidst the filth of the municipal rubbish dump.

Recicla buys used plastic from the public for a price of 1.5 meticais (six US cents) a kilo. "It might be a broken table of chair, a plastic flask, with or without labels, painted or otherwise", said Schwalbach.

The plastic is washed, separated by colour, crushed, and eventually sold on to the four plastics factories operating in Maputo. "These factories buy our entire production", said Schwalbach. "Naturally, if we managed to produce more, we would sell more".

Recicla is a joint initiative between the municipal council, the Italian NGO LVIA, and the German GTZ.

Schwalbach recognised that it is not the job of the Council to run such factories. The Council's plan was therefore to hand the factory over to its workers in 2006. That proved impossible, since the workers refused, arguing that they did not yet have the administrative and organizational capacity to continue without the Council's support.

The factory is now paying the workers a wage that varies between 2,400 and 2,600 meticais (about 100 dollars) a month, much more than the 200 meticais they were earning from selling what they scavenged from the rubbish dump.

Schwalbach said the factory is now sustaining itself. The workers are paying the factory's water and electricity bills, and the municipal council "isn't paying a penny".