The consumer needs safety from plastics and polythenes
Polythene bags and plastics in general are ubiquitous in our daily lives today. They are convenient and quite affordable too. However, we seem to be sacrificing convenience and affordability for our health and the good of our environment.
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This frightening truth was confirmed recently by the eminent heart surgeon, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, when he spoke to the media on varied health and lifestyle issues confronting us. Among others, Professor Frimpong-Boateng dropped a hint about the effects of the plastics we are fixated on.
Good information to have but that is the undeniable truth some of us shudder to hear due to guilt. Considering the rate at which we have all become exposed to this synthetic world of non-degradable polythene bags and other plastic wraps, there is no gainsaying the fact that we are victims of whatever hazardous chemical reactions plastics have on either food or the environment.
Shocking but there is apparently enough scientific evidence to show that even at low levels, food can be contaminated by harmful chemicals from some types of plastic wraps that we use on a daily basis.
The additional revelation though is that, it is not only cooked foods that react with these wraps. Raw foods such as vegetables, meat, fish, and fruits all pose some risks once they come into contact with the harmful chemicals.
These days, many of us are picking our complete meals from either the wayside or the “check-check” outlets, neatly wrapped in layers of transparent and black plastic bags. We purchase our breakfast of hot Hausa koko, koose or oven fresh bread all wrapped in transparent plastic food bags thinking we are going healthy.
Lunch and dinner time picks sometimes include waakye, banku, tilapia or okro stew again wrapped neatly in transparent plastics and tucked into black polythene bags for easy carry.
The healthy snacks such as hot roast plantain and peanuts, or freshly peeled pineapple and pawpaw have become part of our daily lives and they all come neatly packed in plastic bags sometimes sitting in the sun. At the end of the day, we are likely to top everything up with water in sachet bags. We go through these religiously unmindful of the reaction of the chemicals in the plastics on our foods.
Unfortunately, it is not only our health that we seem to be mortgaging but we are in perilous times when it comes to our environment too.
At a recent launch of a book co-authored by Rev. A. H. Awortwi and Sophia Awortwi titled, “Mind your environment: It is your life support”, Mrs Awortwi , a former head of GES Science Directorate, remarked that “most of our major cities in Ghana are now choked with waste products.” She is right. Accra, the capital, for example, is swamped in plastic waste.
Black polythene bags have clogged our open gutters and drains. Our street corners, our beaches, car parks and market places, are all covered in plastic waste. The story is no different in the other bigger towns. Experts mince no words warning us that we are gradually destroying our ecosystem.
In this 21st century, active recycling of plastic waste is not part of our waste management plans. We dispose of our waste perilously. I once bought two bins just so I can separate my waste only for my service provider to tell me that using two garbage bins meant paying double the monthly collection fee.
They knew that both bins were constantly half full. There seems to be no expert and professional directions from city authorities on waste otherwise we would not be seeing what we see with our refuse disposal.
At our dumping grounds and incinerators, plastics which we are told degrade slowly, are burned together with other solid waste emitting toxic fumes into the atmosphere. No wonder residents are sometimes up in arms against landfill sites in their communities. The professional management of waste disposal seems lacking.
Accra already has enough problems with electronic waste in Agbobloshie despite its close proximity to human settlement. None of the media cries about the dangers of e-waste has fallen on the ears of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the burning of e-waste continues openly.
So we know that all is not well in this synthetic world of polythene bags. The questions we probably need answers to is what are the regulators doing to protect the health and safety of individuals and the sanity of our communities? Are we slowly being poisoned by plastic manufacturers who perhaps are more profit-minded than the health and safety of consumers? Are regulators setting limits in the type of chemicals used in the manufacturing of those polythene and plastic bags we have on our market? If they do, how regular or effective are the monitoring systems?
It is worrying that the very regulators paid to ensure consumer protection continue to fail us. Our health and environment have been compromised for too long and 2014 should be the year of fighting for the consumer’s safety as far as plastics are concerned. If the regulators will not ban those manufacturers using unapproved limits of the chemicals used in manufacturing polythene and plastic bags, then, individually and collectively, we should begin to boycott their patronage. There are more questions than answers, it seems.