'Bring your own' the answer to plastic deluge

Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

BYOB, for long the acronym behind any successful potluck party, now has a new meaning. The acronym, which commonly stands for "Bring Your Own Bottle", is slowly working its way into people's minds as "Bring Your Own Bag."

The worldwide grassroots movement to fight environmental destruction by reducing the use of plastic bags has entered Jakarta, albeit with baby steps. And BYOB is at the center of it.

Plastic bags are the most ubiquitous non-biodegradable material on earth. According to the website www.reusablebags.com, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used around the world each year.

The raw material for plastic bags is petroleum. The bags themselves can take from anywhere between 15 to 1000 years to naturally break down.

Shoppers walking to the doorstep of (ak.'sa.ra) bookstore in Kemang, South Jakarta, are greeted with a simple white and green poster asking them to bring their own bag next time, if they want to help fight climate change.

"We give people the choice of using a reusable tote bag that they can purchase for Rp 10,000 or use our plastic bags if they don't bring their own," the bookstore's director of operations Adinda Simandjuntak said Monday.

Inspired by the Al Gore's eye-opening An Inconvenient Truth, (ak.'sa.ra) has tried to respond to the former U.S. Vice President's message by launching its own "Going Green" campaign.

And BYOB is a key part of the bookstore's campaign.

"With Al Gore's documentary we were shocked by the fact that things were not getting better," Adinda said.

The president of the Jakarta chapter of Friends of the Earth, Slamet Daroyni, told The Jakarta Post that dealing with the solid waste from plastic bags was a matter of urgency for Jakarta.

"Jakartans consume a huge amount of plastic bags. The recycling of plastic bags to produce other plastic products such as buckets is very dangerous for the environment. It releases dioxin into the environment ... The use of black plastic bags that are made of used plastic bags is unhealthy because it can cause cancer or respiratory problems, at the very least," he said.

"If we estimate that the population of Jakartans is 9 million people, in which 3 million go to mall every day. Two million shop and take at least three plastic bags home. That means six million plastic bags are brought home that day," he said.

Going off Slamet's reckoning, Jakartans would then use 730 million plastic bags each year, which would fill the city's dumpsters.

Adinda said (ak.'sa.ra) was not just a bookstore per se, but also a community center.

"It would be wrong for us to do nothing," she said.

Eveline, a 29-year-old book shopper forgot to bring her own bag Monday, but supported the idea.

"I haven't brought my own bag yet. But I do support the movement. I think it's a very good idea. If I buy small things I ask them not to use plastic bags and to just put the things into my bag," she said.

The efforts of (ak.'sa.ra) pale in comparison to supermarkets in European countries such as Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany that generally charge customers for carry bags, rather than give them away freely.

"We want to introduce the movement in a friendly way. We're not trying to force them to accept it. Otherwise, rather than embracing the movement, people will resist it," she said.

Eveline said that even though she supported the movement to reduce the use of plastic bags, she said she needed them to wrap her garbage at home.

Slamet said the concrete political will of lawmakers was needed to help change how people behaved toward the environment.

"People can leave plastic bags for wrapping garbage by using trash cans that separate organic and non-organic waste. But the city administration also has to provide garbage trucks that accommodate trash separation. This should be regulated for," he said.

Slamet said that with a good policy on trash, the government could encourage retailers to begin charging for plastic bags. A bill on trash is currently being deliberated by the House of Representatives.

San Francisco in the United States, for example, has now banned plastic bags from large supermarkets, the first city to do so.

"I'm sure that grassroots movements like BYOB can shape policy making into being more environmentally aware," he said.