ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An independent environmental organization on Sunday announced that it is introducing a bill to the Kurdistan Region’s parliament on limiting and reducing plastic use and imports.
“7,000 tons of waste are being dumped into the environment daily. 35 percent of the waste is plastic waste. We, as an organization, felt the need to have a bill to limit this,” Sarwar Qaradaghi, co-chair of Kurdistan Nature Organization (KNO), said at a press conference on Sunday.
The bill is to “limit importing and producing plastic goods in southern Kurdistan [the Kurdistan Region],” Qaradaghi said, which includes “banning the use of plastic bags … banning all kinds of plastic goods.”
This is in addition to a 100 percent tax on importing plastic goods into the Kurdistan Region and 75 percent on plastic producing companies.
Those who violate the bill will receive prison sentences of between one month and two years, and a fine of two to ten million dinars, according to Qaradaghi.
He added that the types of plastic being imported into the Kurdistan Region “are banned in most countries.”
Littering and the overuse of plastic is a common issue in the Kurdistan Region, much of which ends up in rivers as it rains. Toxic material consequently leaks into river water, which is used for drinking, irrigation and fish farming.
Plastic water bottles in the Kurdistan Region can be “severely intoxicated by the sun” as they are not protected at the stores and factories, Omed Qadir, head of Charmo Center for Research and Training, told Rudaw’s Ranj Sangawi on April 12.
According to research Qadir has conducted, “the quality is very low … the toxic materials are too much, much more than the standard.” Some of the plastic water bottles are “a million times more” toxic than the standard, from water bottles to children’s toys.
The lack of a national standard or quality control for plastics is a huge issue, the scientist said.
“The plastic bottles' essential material is imported from abroad, but imported at the businessman’s preference. The companies abroad can make it clean like they do for a European country or according to the businessman’s preference for the money you’re willing to pay.”
In other research conducted by Qadir on children’s toys, in which 100 plastics toys were sampled, “the ones from Europe have zero toxic material, but the ones in the Middle East, because they are not being investigated are very high. Thousands of times higher than the world standard.”
Qadir added that the plastic bottles imported from Iran are significantly more toxic than the ones Iranians use domestically.
“Quality control should prepare it [as a bill], send it to parliament. It has to be passed as a law in parliament, and implement it on all the four official border crossings of the Kurdistan Region,” he said.
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