Survey on usage of single use plastic bags in Nepal

Abstract

The rapid urbanization and economic growth have caused increase of plastic products globally. The least developed countries (LDCs) have been facing severe problems with solid waste due to lack of people’s awareness, lack of skilled manpower to handle waste and necessary equipment to manage in sustainable manner. Nepal, a LDC in South Asia, lacks source segregation leading the maximum plastic items reaching to the landfill site. It is even difficult for the planning authorities to make effective plans for sustainable management of plastic waste due to lack of waste generation data. Nepal has made many rules and directives to ban plastic bags till date but has failed in its implementation. This study is the first of its kind to capture the perception of youths towards single use bags in Nepal. This study was conducted among 569 Nepalese youths of age between 18-40 years. A closed ended self-administered questionnaire was distributed among the respondents and responses were collected for three weeks. The questionnaire was prepared using google form and distributed via Facebook. A snowball method was used where the respondents were asked to share the questionnaire in their network. It was found that majority of Nepalese youths have been practicing the source segregation at their houses. The use of single use plastic is very common in Nepal with an individual using at least 208 plastic bags in a year. The gender and source segregation of waste was statistically significant with p-value of 0.02 (<0.05). The main reason of using plastic bags was its easy availability. There is lack of alterative to the plastic bags in Nepal. However, the youths are ready to support the government plastic ban policy and have asked the alternatives to the plastic bags. The result has shown that the Nepalese people have negative perception towards single use plastics and are in search of alternatives. The government need to implement heavy penalty for producing plastic bags greater than 30 micron and deploy tax with shop keepers and customer if found using it.