According to this statement, "The Government of Tanzania wishes to make an official note to travelers planning to travel to Tanzania that from 1st June 2019 all plastic carrier bags, regardless of their thickness will be prohibited from being imported, exported, manufactured, sold, stored, supplied and used in mainland Tanzania."
If you are worried about the plastic bag you use for your toiletries, you don't need to because, as the Government states, "plastics carrier items known as "ziploc bags" that are specifically used to carry toiletries will be permitted as they are expected to remain in the permanent possession of visitors and are not expected to be disposed in the country".
NOTICE TO TRAVELERS PLANNING TO VISIT TANZANIA
The Government of Tanzania wishes to make an official note to travelers planning to visit Tanzania that from 1st June 2019 all plastic carrier bags, regardless of their thickness will be prohibited from being imported, exported, manufactured, sold, stored, supplied and used in Mainland Tanzania.
However, plastic or plastic packaging for medical services, industrial products, construction industry, agricultural sector, foodstuff, sanitary and waste management are not prohibited.
Visitors to Tanzania are advised to avoid carrying plastic carrier bags or packing plastic carrier bags or items in plastic carrier bags in the suitcase or hand luggage before embarking on visit to Tanzania.
Special desk will be designated at all entry points for surrender of plastics carrier bags that visitors may be bringing into Tanzania.
Plastics carrier items known as “ziploc bags” that are specifically used to carry toiletries will be permitted as they are expected to remain in the permanent possession of visitors and are not expected to be disposed in the country.
The Government does not intend for visitors to Tanzania to find their stay unpleasant as we enforce the ban.
However, the Government expects that, in appreciation of the imperative to protect the environment and keep our country clean and beautiful, our visitors will accept minor inconveniences resulting from the plastic bags ban.
In a historic conservation move the government of the United Republic of Tanzania has announced the ban on plastic bag use from the first of June this Year.
In his speech during a budget session in the National Parliament of Tanzania the Prime Minister His Excellency Kassim Majaliwa announced that the last day to use plastic bags in Tanzania will be 31st May 2019 and from the 1st June no one will be allowed to produce, import, sell or use plastic bags.
He called on the plastic producing industries in the country to diverse some other technology for carrying bags instead of plastics.
He said he has directed the minister for environment and union from the Vice President’s office to include the ban in the existing environment law and make it a legal ban.
WWF Country Director Dr. Amani Ngusaru has congratulated the government for stepping up the fight against plastic pollution in the country.
He said WWF Tanzania is impressed with the Tanzania government’s decision to ban the use of plastic bags and carriers which will be a big bust in the bid to protect the environment and natural resources.
Plastic is a number one polluter of environment and a silent killer of our natural environment and resources than most people understand. This is because it takes more than a hundred years for a single plastic bag to decay.
We are happy that Tanzania is among the very few African countries to ban the use of plastic bags and we will work hard toward supporting the government in the fight against plastic pollution.
We understand that the control of plastic pollution calls for all stakeholders’ participation in raising awareness and making sure that the ban is being effectively observed, we are therefore ready to work with the government to give expert advice whenever needed.
Our initiatives will also be directed towards raising awareness to the Tanzania community as we believe an educated man is a wealthy man, he said.
Tanzania joins about 13 countries in Africa that have either banned or introduced a levy on plastic bags to control and eventually stop its use.
In East Africa Kenya introduced a complete ban on plastic last August while in Uganda In 2007, a ban of lightweight plastic bags was introduced and came into effect that year. However, the ban was never implemented. Plastics even the countries with bans are still using them illegally.
Plastic which was introduced in Africa a generation ago has been reported to pollute both the seas and land at an alarming rate.
According to EcoWatch Plastics affect all biological spectrum, including posing risks to human health and wildlife, the accumulation of these products has led to increasing amounts of environmental pollution around the world including Africa.
About 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean's surface is believed to be emanating from plastics.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), half of all plastic produced is designed to be used just once and then discarded, resulting in mass amounts of chemically-laden debris landing in oceans and littering landscapes.
Another dead whale has washed ashore with a belly full of plastic.
This week, the carcass of the young sperm whale, estimated to have been 7 years old, was found on a beach in Cefalù, Italy. Investigators aren’t certain whether the plastic killed the whale. But it’s part of a gruesome pattern that’s become impossible to ignore.
In April, a pregnant sperm whale washed up on a beach in Sardinia with nearly 50 pounds’ worth of plastic bags, containers, and tubing in her stomach. Biologists in Florida last month euthanized a baby rough-toothed dolphin with two plastic bags and a shredded balloon in its stomach.
The dolphin was very young and emaciated said Michelle Kerr, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in an email. Due to a poor prognosis, the decision was made to humanely euthanize the animal on scene.
In March, a 1,100-pound Cuvier’s beaked whale was recovered in the Philippines filled with 88 pounds of plastic bags, fishing line, and rice sacks. A beached sperm whale was found in Indonesia last year with more than 1,000 pieces of plastic inside.
As the quantity of plastic humans dump in the ocean has reached obscene proportions, we’re seeing more and more sea life including birds, otters, sea turtles, and fish choking on it.
But the impact on whales is particularly alarming. After centuries of whaling and overfishing, the survival of many whale species is already precarious. Now, just as their numbers are starting to recover, whales are consuming our toxic waste.
And their deaths aren’t just about biodiversity loss: Whales play a critical role in marine ecosystems, which provide 3 billion people with their primary sources of protein.
To find out more about why whales are so vulnerable to plastic waste, Lars Bejder, director of the Marine Mammal Research Program at the University of Hawaii Manoa said there are multiple mechanisms at work here and that dying isn’t the only plastic hazard for whales, and explained why the problem will only get worse.
The root cause of these stranded, plastic-filled whales is that plastic is cheap and easy to produce but almost impossible for nature to destroy. Chunks of plastic linger for decades, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. This waste then churns in the ocean in massive gyres.
Roughly 8 million metric tons of plastic, a mass greater than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza enters the ocean each year.
Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out how much plastic waste has already accumulated in the ocean. A study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports estimated that 414 million bits of garbage weighing 238 tons have been deposited on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands 1,300 miles off the coast of Australia.
It’s a sign that even the most remote regions of the world are now contaminated with the detritus of civilization.
Sadly, the situation on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands is not unique, with significant quantities of debris documented on islands and coastal areas from the Arctic to the Antarctic, researchers wrote.
Global debris surveys, the majority of which are focused solely on surface debris, have drastically underestimated the scale of debris accumulation.
And the amount of plastic waste in the ocean is surging. Our current trajectory puts us on track to have more plastic in the ocean than fish by weight by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum.
So for the largest, hungriest animals in the ocean, plastic is becoming an unwelcome part of their diets.
Whales are among the more intelligent creatures in the ocean, so why aren’t they smart enough to avoid eating plastic?
Well, one reason is that often plastic is in their food.
Small crustaceans like krill and tiny fish like anchovies often end up inadvertently consuming microplastics. Whales, the largest animals ever known to have existed, have a voracious appetite for these critters. A blue whale eats between 2 and 4 tons of krill per day.
Whales like the blue whale have baleen plates in their mouths that act as filters, trapping their small prey as well as small bits of plastic. This means they are less likely to ingest larger plastic waste items like bottles and containers, but the small plastic bits they consume quickly pile up.
These baleen whales filter hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water per day, Bejder said. You can imagine all these microplastics they encounter through this filtration process that then become bioaccumulated.
Microplastics are unlikely to obstruct the digestive tract of a baleen whale, but as they build up inside an animal’s tissues, they can leach toxic chemicals like endocrine disruptors that make the creature sick. This problem can affect all ocean filter feeders, including manta rays and whale sharks.
That means there could be large whales dying of plastic poisoning without obvious culprits like flip-flops and food containers in their stomachs, according to Bejder.
A study published this week in Royal Society Open Science also reported that plastic pollution is more dangerous to baleen whales than oil spills. Particle capture studies suggest potentially greater danger to baleen whales from plastic pollution than oil.
Toothed whales like sperm whales and dolphins normally catch bigger prey, like squid. But since they can swallow larger animals, they are vulnerable to larger chunks of plastic, like bags and nets.
They might be seeking those out because they’re thinking they might be prey, Bejder said. A plastic container in murky waters could resemble a fish to a toothed whale, or a sperm whale may inadvertently swallow plastic garbage as it hunts for a meal.
Once ingested, the plastic piles up in the whale’s stomach. It can then obstruct bowels, preventing whales from digesting food and leading them to starve to death.
It can also give a whale a false sense of being full, leading the whale to eat less and get weaker. That leaves it vulnerable to predators and disease.
We’re only seeing a tiny fraction of the whales being harmed by plastic.
Part of the reason we pay so much attention to whales killed by plastic is because the whales themselves are very big and the plastic culprits are startlingly obvious.
Large animals decay slowly, giving people plenty of time to figure out the cause of death, whereas smaller fish and crustaceans dying from plastic decompose quickly and are rarely investigated.
Even for casual observers, a dead whale blocking a beach vacation photo is pretty hard to ignore.
The ones that land on the beach that are killed through ingestion, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. They’re just the ones that we see, Bejder said. I’m sure that many, many marine mammals have some levels of plastic bags and plastic items in their stomachs.
Many more whales could be dying from plastic poisoning without our knowledge. Around the Gulf of Mexico for example, 2 to 6 percent of whale carcasses end up on a shoreline. That means the vast majority sink to the ocean floor. This is likely the case for most of the world’s waters.
And the fact that whales are suffering shows that our marine ecosystems in general are in peril. Whales, baleen whales, these larger dolphins species are pretty much at the top of the food chain, Bejder said. They are sentinels of ocean health.
But with more plastic waste pouring into the ocean, the prognosis for the most mega of megafauna is grim.
Tourism Observer
