UB Dons Call For Prompt Suspension Of Plastic Levy
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Monday August 14, 2017 15:49
In their journal article titled, ‘Polluter Pays or Polluter Enriching The Retailers: The case of plastic bag levy failure in Botswana’, published in the South African Crime Quarterly last month, the academics said the levy has only served to enrich the business owners in the name of the environment.
“It has been almost 10 years since the introduction of plastic levy in Botswana. The levy was introduced as part of measures to combat littering of plastic bags and reduce their negative effects on the environment. The main objective of environmental taxes is to pass on the cost of pollution on polluters.”
The authors are Goemeone Mogomotsi, a legal officer in the Department of Legal Services at UB and Patricia Madigele, a research scholar specialising in Environmental Resources Economics at the Okavango Research Institute, where she coordinates the sustainable tourism programme.
The article explains that investigations on the effectiveness of the plastic levy in ensuring that the public or the government does not shoulder the burden of waste management since its introduction in the country had been done and it was discovered that the plastic levy was not being used for the purposes it was intended for due to the failure of the government to collect the levied monies from business owners. The study concludes that there are institutional vacuums and failures that hinder the effective implementation of the plastic levy in Botswana.
They further explained that even though plastic had become one of the most useful material in the last century, it has on the other hand being viewed by some as a mass produced curse filling up landfill, choking wildlife and littering the forests.
Despite their lightweight, strength, and durability, there are downsides to such bags: once ripped or torn they lose their value, and when too readily and cheaply available, the incentive to re-use them drops sharply.
“Plastic bags in Botswana are of use to consumers but at a cost to the environment. The widespread use of easy access, very cheap and low quality plastic bags have resulted in a negative visual externality for the used bags littering both urban and rural streets. Environmental degradation caused by littering of plastic bags has been and still is a problem in Botswana. This seriously affected some sectors which are the main contributors to the national economic being agriculture and tourism.”
The article discusses the place of plastic bag levy within the broader debate of Polluter Pays Principle. It assesses the application of the principle in Botswana in seeking to make the determination whether the collection of the levy has made contributions to relieve the government from bearing the costs of pollution made by the use of plastic bags.
The authors however pointed out that the journal does not seek to make an investigation and or assessment as to whether the levy has managed to reduce the use of plastic bags in the country.
Since the levy was imposed in 2007, shoppers began paying between 15 and 25 thebe for the plastic bags. Currently, some shops charge as much as 50 thebe for a bag.
Consumers have forked out millions of pula to retail stores that should have been used to fund environmental initiatives, but government proved to have failed to collect the proceeds.
Instead, the money that should have funded environmental initiatives is only benefiting businesses since there are no adequate collection structures within government. While the price of plastic bags has meant consumers have not tossed them away as readily as they did in the past, resulting in a noticeable reduction of plastic bag litter, none of the money has been used to recycle plastic bags, nor have any recycling jobs been created.
The levy followed the introduction of the Plastic Carrier Bags and Flat Bags Specification by the Botswana Bureau of Standards (BOBS).