Global Plastic Policy Reviews

The No Plastic Bag Everyday Initiative was first introduced as ‘No Plastic Bag Weekend Initiative’ in 2011, which later expanded to No Plastic Bag Everyday Initiative by 1st January 2019. It is a voluntary initiative aimed to uptake the 3R concept and to discourage the use of single use-plastics at department stores, shops and businesses and encourage the use of reusable bags and/or recyclable packaging among both consumers and businesses when purchasing from shops (‘Brunei: Action and Progress on Marine Plastic Litter’, 2021; Green Brunei, 2021).

It was officially launched by the Minister of Development on 26th March 2011. The primary driver for this policy was environmental. A survey conducted by the Department of Environment, Parks and Recreation in 2011 for two weekends showed that the use of plastic bags for one supermarket is from 3000 – 8000 bags. Of this amount, every supermarket will use 144.000 to 393.600 plastic bags each year, which it is just an estimated amount on weekends only. By estimation, if 3000 – 8000 plastic bags are used every day by every department store in the country, then 20 department stores will be using 22 – 60 million in a year (Department of Environment, Parks and Recreation, Ministry of Development, n.d.).
There was limited evidence available to evaluate this policy. However, figures indicate that the ‘No Plastic Bag Weekend’ initiative has resulted in major department stores reporting a steady decrease of a 12% monthly average, with a reduction difference of 77% in plastic bag use between January and December 2018. Consequently, this initiative was gradually expanded into the ‘No Plastic Bag Everyday’ initiative starting in 2019, with over 60 participating stores (Ministry of Finance and Economy, 2020). Some unintended consequences were also reported. Figures also show that “customers keep buying the reusable bags when they go shopping rather than reusing them as intended” (Wasil, 2019).

(Uploaded in Dec 2023)