Tila, an owner of a fruit and vegetable selling stand in “The 21 December” quarter in Tirana city, says that she used the 35 micron recyclable bags for only one month in December 2018, when their control by the Tirana Municipality began. "I used recyclable bags, but they were too expensive and we had to buy them, thus narrowing our profit. It's a good thing that it lasted very little as a practice, because it was forgotten very quickly, and better, that even those bags that we bought were without any kind of standard and the company had created their monopoly, with salty prices. In this job, we are talking about 5 ALL or 10 ALL, in terms of profit for selling an item", she says.

From noble purpose to more plastic bags

To reduce the high pollution of the environment, mainly of rivers and seas, from plastic that is not recycled, constitutes a noble action, which would guarantee the future of the health for our children and grandchildren. In Albania, an average of 3.2 billion plastic bags are used per year or the equivalent of 26,280 tons of bags, while a citizen uses an average of 3 disposable plastic bags per day.

Over the last years, the Government has sought to limit or remove single-use plastic bags from market. A fair goal indeed. The local government tried first in December 2018. Following the example of Germany (in 2016, Germany made the decision to stop giving free plastic bags to retailers, and this helped reduce the use from 68 plastic bags per capita to 24 plastic bags, or almost three times less) , the Municipality of Tirana imposed on supermarkets and other retail outlets to put a price on plastic bags. Businesses set a price of five ALL per bag and this measure somewhat limited their use, as citizens, to save money, took with them bigger and thicker bags from home.

Further, unfortunately, every action taken by the central Government has simply increased the costs of plastic packaging for citizens and the quantity of plastic in the environment. How did this happen?

Why increasing the weight of plastic bags does not limit plastic pollution

On April 26, 2018, with the Decision of the Council of Ministers no. 232 "For some changes and additions to Decision of the Council of Ministers no. 177, dated 6.3.2012 "On plastic packaging and their waste" the Government tried to replace light single-use plastic bags of 15-18 micron of thickness, with heavier plastic packaging, of more than 35 micron of thicknes. The latter is oxo-degradable (it gets oxidized in the environment). The Government required that this new plastic material should have no less than 55 percent raw material from recycling, or bio-degradable materials. The bio-degradable materials dissolve in the environment and do not remain as a toxic residue.

The oxo-degradable material is extremely dangerous. Oxidation as a process means breaking down the plastic material into particles. For scientists in the European Union and around the world, pollution with plastic particles is much more harmful than pollution from normal plastic bags.

Scientists warn that as plastic slowly breaks down, micro-particles enter food chains and end up in humans. Today, there are many studies that show toxic traces in living organisms, due to the use of oxo-degradable materials. After three years, the oxo-degradable bags become toxic fertilizer!

35 micron thickness or double the plastic among us

However, plastic bags with a thickness of 35 micron as in the photo above, described by the government as "multi-use", began to be given by supermarkets and other trading points for 10 ALL a bag, but only one in a hundred citizens took it upon themselves to use them again! This is because they are thick and do not bend easily. When they are bent, they swell your pocket and you can't hold them, at least not men and boys.

They contain more than 55 percent (often up to 90-100 percent) plastic from recycling, i.e. from waste processing. Such bags do not contain bio-degradable materials, since the latter are natural elements, such as wheat, corn or potato starch, which cost a lot as raw material for the production of bags.

In this way, the 35 micron bags only added to, practically doubled the amount of plastic in circulation, as they were rarely, if ever, used more than once, being thrown into the waste bin by our households immediately after the first use. Meanwhile, citizens' expense for packaging in their daily purchases increased.

The increase in cost would have been justified if nature could have benefited, but it is not the case. In the contrary! Nature was filled with more plastic by such Government action.

Meanwhile, despite the modification of the legislation, through the Decision of the Council of Ministers no. 232 and the introduction of thicker bags in supermarkets, single-use plastic bags with a thickness of 15-18 microns continued to be used heavily during the period May 2018-May 2022, as they were cheaper and were more comfortable.

The law of "Plastic Particles". What happened on June 1, 2022?

On October 16, 2019, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism announced the initiative "Albania, the first European country without plastic bags". Behind the initiative was a draft law prepared by the ministry, which sanctioned with a heavy fine of 500,000 ALL those who produced, imported or put on the market single-use plastic bags. In case of repetition, the value of the fine was tripled to 1.5 million ALL and the entire amount of prohibited plastic bags was confiscated. In case they repeated the contravention for the third time, the business license was revoked.

This bill was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the opposition of the recycing industry that produces and imports bags. This industry had a turnover of 50 million euros and 29 out of its 62 enterprises produced single-use bags.

The draft law was turned into law two years later, with Law No. 28/2022 "For some additions and changes in the Law no. 10 463, dated 22.9.2011, "On integrated waste management", later amended", approved by the Parliament on March 17, 2022.

The change from the first draft was that the Government now doubled the requirement for oxo-degradable plastic bags, doubling their thickness from 35 to 70 microns and specifying the dimensions, which should be 50 cm long and 24 cm wide, with capacity over 10 kilograms and with a thickness of over 70 microns on each side.

The law was dubbed the "plastic particles" law by those few among us who understood the absurdity of using oxo-degradable heavy plastic bags.

The new plastic: an attack on food safety

The oxo-degradable bag has both a high risk and a big problem, according to European Union standards. Since, by law, more than 55 percent of the raw materials for its production come from the recycling industry, the contact of fresh food with this bag is not advisable, as it significantly reduces food safety, because the sources of recycling are not known. No European Union country would allow this bag to come into contact with unpackaged fresh food. This happens to us often, unfortunately.

The Government, stunned by the positive look of the initiative at first sight, nicknamed as the "future without plastic bags in Albania" initiative, or bogus statements such as "Albania, the first country in Europe without plastic bags!", misdirected by a total indictment of the damage from plastic particles, but filled with the hosannas of the report addicted to the draft law, that we are supposedly in line with the European Union Directives for the protection of the environment and the reduction of the use of plastic materials, resulting in the limitation of plastic waste, announced June 1, 2022 as the first day of implementation of the new law.

Perhaps the government sincerely hoped that these twice as heavy bags would eventually be used more than once. But that didn't happen.

Indeed, as of June 1st, with plastic bags like the one pictured above, twice as heavy and with twice as much plastic as 35 micron bags, we have quadrupled the presence of plastic in our environment! Again, these bags are being used by citizens only once and again they are not being turned into multi-use bags. The law and the Government initiative have failed completely.

What we have achieved is that we have doubled the price of plastic packaging for our citizens, which is now 20 ALL, supposedly in the name of protecting the lives and health of our children.

How did the European Union solve the issue?

The European Directive No. 720 of 2015 provided that all Member States of the European Union should have reduced the use of plastic bags to 90 bags per year per capita in 2020 and to 40 bags per capita in 2026. With all the 27 EU Member States, which, more or less, travelling in this direction and significantly reducing the presence of plastic in their countries.

The United Europe has chosen two paths. The first is through the use of plastic bags entirely composed of natural elements, i.e. wheat, corn and potato amides. These bags are very light, with a thickness of 12 microns and are completely biodegradable. For this first route, Albania has a pioneer company, which is located in Durres and has the latest technology, which produces completely bio-degradable 12 microns bags.

This company is seriously at risk of bankruptcy, as the State and Government do not support bio-degradable plastic bags. Quite often, supermarkets selling such bags have been fined, as our inspectors have caught them with bags 12 microns thick, that is against the law!

So, we fine the enterprises that offer the citizen plastic bags completely bio-degradable! Our controller can rightly ask: "How can I tell that it is not a single-use polluting bag, but a bio-degradable bag?"

To provide the answer, all our Government needs to do is to provide a fund of only 150 thousand euro and buy a laboratory that measures the percentage of plastic materials. The State inspector would be able to take the sample to the lab and spot the difference. The sooner our Government gets this laboratory, the better it will be for our economy and society, for the future of our children’s health.

The second path chosen by the EU is the promotion of the use of textile bags and the partial subsidization of their costs by the State.

Our government has exactly these two paths, to really help the health of our children and to protect our future from being poisoned by plastic waste. It should move as soon as possible towards these two alternatives and correct the absurd law that the Parliament approved five months ago. So as not to quadruple the presence of plastic with such harmful initiatives of a noble façade, but a rotten content.