Transcript
Vanuatu's Prime Minister Charlot Salwai announced his intention to ban the importation and use of disposable plastic bottles and bags while addressing the country on Independence Day last weekend.
The move follows the social media campaign 'No plastic bag, plis' launched by the Alliance Française's Port Vila director Georges Cumbo.
"We start end of March just to do some awareness because we realise there started to be a lot of plastic pollution in Vila, in Vanuatu, and after a few weeks we decided to start this petition so we started this petition in May."
The petition has received over 2,600 signatures and Mr Cumbo says with the Prime Minister's acknowledgement he's confident a law will be enacted over the coming months.
"When we launched this Facebook page, we saw there was a real interest because after one week there was already one thousand people following this page and now it's four thousand. In Vanuatu we have a small population, it's only 250-thousand people so I think it's a good sign."
And local Vanuatu groups are waiting to fill the void with Bulvanua Art and Handicrafts president Rosa Vatu planning to use its network of women throughout the islands to weave disposable baskets for use in Port Vila.
In Fiji, the Ba Women's Forum has similar plans after the government this week imposed a new levy on plastic bags that will cost shoppers another 5 US cents if they want a bag with their purchase.
The forum's president Maria Doton says they have previously trained women to sew re-usable sanitary napkins to replace disposable ones.
"And the second project that we have is these shopping bags out of cloth to get rid of the use of plastic bags. We manufacture these in our training centre and we also give work to our women who have previously graduated from our sewing classes, so they sew it at home."
She says they're working with government to distribute them.
"The first lot of 5-thousand bags went to the Ministry for Women and the Ministry for Women has distributed it to supermarkets. They're having meetings with supermarkets to distribute and sell these bags to those people who want to get rid of the plastic and use these cloth bags instead."
Maria Doton says the price will cover materials and labour, and the plastic bag levy will be rolled out firstly through retailers with electronic points of purchase.
In the Northern Marianas, a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives which fines retailers up to a thousand US dollars a day for offering plastic bags.
It still has to be passed by the Senate.
Our correspondent in the CNMI Mark Rabago says even then there are no guarantees.
"I liken this to the sugar bill, the bill against sugary beverages that passed both the senate and the house last year. There was a lot of support especially from the healthcare community about it and then it just died in the hands of the governor because he said it just doesn't make economic sense because it just gives a lot of financial burden to the people."
In Solomon Islands, a prohibition is being considered in Western Province due to major plastic pollution.
Meanwhile the south-west Pacific 'garbage patch' has recently been identified as the most plastic-polluted expanse of ocean on the planet.
The gyre as it is called is almost devoid of marine life, while 97 percent of fish in the south Pacific show signs of having ingested plastic, compared with the global average of 67 percent.
