March into any household in Abu Dhabi, rummage through the kitchen cupboards and it won’t take long before you hit upon a multicoloured stockpile of plastic bags. Typically found lurking behind a dusty old tin of pears, these garishly coloured menaces spend their lonely days secretly conspiring to bring about the downfall of humanity, right there under your nose.
Okay, so we’re being a tad over-dramatic. Unfortunately, though, the steadily growing mountain of plastic shopping bags clogging up our kitchens is a bigger problem than you might think. It’s estimated that every UAE resident gets through four bags per day, adding up to a staggering 11 billion per year. And as Dr Eduardo Goncalves, director of environment awareness at Environment Agency Abu Dhabi tells us, things have to change. ‘The production of these billions of bags is a by-product of the petroleum cycle, which contributes to global warming,’ he says.
While the issue of homeless polar bears might not seem particularly real to us desert-dwellers, there’s another, more immediate environmental consequence of all this excess plastic, happening much closer to home: waste. And with your average bag taking an estimated 400 years to biodegrade, it’s inevitable that a few will escape the landfill. ‘A lot of plastic bags end up in the desert,’ says Dr Goncalves. ‘One of the most startling statistics we’ve come across is that half of all camel deaths in the UAE happen as a direct result of plastic bags. They either choke on them, or they go into their stomachs and cause issues with their digestive system. So the camel feels like its stomach is full and it starves. It’s a very painful death.’
And our humped friends aren’t the only creatures suffering at the hands of our discarded carrier bags. Underwater, turtles mistake them for jellyfish and end up choking to death, while the natural coral formations in places such as Bu Tinah Island are being suffocated.
‘Then there’s the Arabian Oryx, too,’ Dr Goncalves continues. ‘They’re one of the great conservation success stories in the world, having become extinct in the wild in 1972, but they’re also now being affected.’ Slowly but surely, it seems Abu Dhabi is asphyxiating icons of its own natural heritage.
Thankfully, though, having launched the Make UAE Plastic Bag Free campaign last week, EAD is taking steps to curb the problem, setting a target to completely remove non-biodegradable plastic bags from the whole country by 2013. Kick-starting the initiative last week was the city’s first ‘plastic bag-free’ weekend, with 39 supermarkets in the city outlawing plastic bags in their stores and instead giving away thousands of reusable jute bags bearing the campaign’s logo.
As far as Dr Goncalves is concerned, it’s an initiative the capital’s shoppers can’t afford not to get on board with, and one he’s confident will help EAD reach its 2013 target. After all, statistics aside, the campaign’s message is an extremely simple one. ‘Get a reusable bag and use it,’ says Dr Goncalves. ‘Lots of people forget, they leave them at home. So we’re also distributing leaflets throughout the Emirates to remind people to take their bags with them when they leave the house.’
But is the Abu Dhabi public really willing to make the effort? This is a city, after all, that’s extremely fond of convenience. With help and encouragement from an enthusiastic younger generation, though, Dr Goncalves believes the plastic bag’s fate is sealed.
‘The message coming from the kids is so loud and clear adults that can’t ignore it. We’ve got a campaign running in 130 UAE schools called Sustainable Schools, which sets the children a task of running an eco club,’ he explains. ‘So they’re already trailblazing – they’re going out there and educating their parents and the rest of their families, and the wider community. When a kid’s telling you something about the legacy you’re going to be leaving them, you have to pay attention.’
For more information about the Make UAE Plastic Bag Free campaign, visit www.ead.ae.
