Tackling the suicidal effects of polythene bags

It is now the time for Nigerian Environmental protection Agency to wake up to the call that plastic bags or polythene bags are no longer acceptable in our modern world environmental phenomenon.

According to Times online

Discarded shopping bags are tumbled like tumbleweed across the islands. But unlike tumbleweed, they do not compost or burn. They provide micro-habitats for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. They block gutters and drains, choke animals and fish, pollute the soil, and have become the national flower because they flap on every thornbush. They can take up to a thousand years to decompose. Penalties for those caught with carrier bags are not flimsy. Offenders against the law risk a jail sentence of six months, and a fine of up to 2,000 dollars (£1,500).


An ocean to the east swirls the North Pacific litter vortex. This is an garbage archipelago of plastic that can swell to twice the size of the United Kingdom, and become solid enough to walk on. It is composed of plastic dumped from ships or blown from the land. It is made up of billions of plastic bags, beach toys, used condoms, toothbrushes and the rest of the detritus of our age. Plastic does not decay like organic material. It threatens marine life and the ecology of the planet.

These exactly the kind of problems Nigerian cities are facing, nylons are still being used in packing waters and it is being used in packaging goods by the market women.

Therefore for a lasting solutions on how to level up the mountain of garbages that had been an eye sore to most Nigerian cities, especially Lagos. The government should make it point of duty to join the rest of the world in eliminating the use of polythene bags and make the Earth a safer, greener and healthier place to live.

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