Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Universiti Putra Malaysia Plastic bag emerged as a well-known product in the 1970's and remain popular as a means of carrying goods (Equinox Center, 2013). It is made of ethylene, or ethane which then polymerized to form polyethylene (Lajeunesse, 2004).
Polyethylene comes from natural gas and petroleum, which normally stable and resistant to degradation. Plastic bags may cause serious environmental problem through littering as it’s not readily decompose and recycling seems not economically viable.
Plastic bag littering may in sewers and drainage blockage, which then poses endanger biotic species and abiotic components when incinerated, buried or damped. It also may become breeding sites for mosquitoes when filled up with rainwater, which end up causing malaria or dengues that will affect human health. Dumping of plastic bags into the ocean, rivers and waterways may cause harm to aquatic animals along with visual pollution.
Selangor has implemented a policy on plastic bags banned for every Saturday since 1st January 2010. A survey in Shah Alam in 2012, reported 66% of 100 respondents are comfortable with the plastic bag banned campaign, and 90% of them believe that it is at the right time. Majority of the consumers highlight it is convenience for them to bring their own shopping bags and they agree that the campaign helps to protect the environment. Almost 75% the respondent willing to participate in the campaign everyday (Kamaruddin & Yusuf, 2012).
Starting from 1st January 2017, Selangor government has implemented new changes to the “No Plastic Bag on Saturday” Campaign where the campaign are now effective everyday. Almost after 9 months of the campaign launched, we had conducted an observation to determine how consumers response to this campaign.
Our recent observation survey in 2017, among 360 consumers in Seri Kembangan, Selangor, shows that;
62% of the consumers (n = 222) participate in the plastic bag campaign.
The highest number of participation was among consumers in the convenience store (n = 83, 69%), followed by hypermarket (n = 77, 64%) and supermarket (n = 62, 52%).
Male were the majority participate (N = 139, 64%).
Among the ethnic group, majority of the Chinese (N = 61, 75%) participate in the campaign followed by Malays (N = 138, 59%) and Indian (N = 23, 52%).
Most of the shoppers who shopped alone participate in the campaign (N = 148, 60%).
The highest number of shoppers who participate in the campaign were doing their shopping on weekdays (N = 67, 74%), 60% on payday and 58% on weekend.
Majority of consumers who participate in the campaign carry their purchased item with bare hand (N = 146, 66%). Others used cart (N = 55, 25%) and eco-friendly bag (N = 21, 9%).
Meanwhile, the highest non-participation of the plastic bag campaign was observed in the supermarket (N = 58, 48%). Female were among the highest not participate in the campaign (N = 61, 42.4%). Out of 245 consumers who came alone, 40% (N = 97) of them did not participate in the campaign while 36% out of 115 consumers (N =41) who came in group, did not participate. The highest number of non-participation was observed on the public holidays (N = 41, 46%), a slightly higher value compared to the weekend (N = 38, 42%) and payday (N = 36, 40%).
What can we conclude?
Based on this trend, we can conclude that the plastic bag campaign in the state receive quite good response. However, result of this study cannot represent the whole Selangor since sampling was only done in Seri Kembangan. Therefore, we would like to suggest for more study being done in other part of the state to determine the probability of this campaign has changed the shopper attitude towards more pro-environmental behaviours.