Global Plastic Policy Reviews

The Plastic Bottle Free Initiative was launched in June 2018 by the the Ministry of Development, through the Department of Environment, Parks and Recreation (JASTRe) in conjunction with the World Environment Day celebration, which carried the theme “Beat Plastic Pollution” (Akenji et al., 2019; Bakar, 2018; Kon, 2018).

Under this initiative, the Ministry of Development banned the use of single-use plastic beverage bottles on its premises. The primary driver was environmental, figures indicate that Brunei generates around 1.3 kg of solid waste per capita per day, which is among the highest in the ASEAN region, and it is predicted that at the current rate of waste generation, the country’s main disposal site, the Sungai Paku Engineered Landfill, will run out of capacity by 2030 (Akenji et al., 2019).

There was insufficient evidence available to evaluate this policy. Some reports indicate that this policy has helped to raise consumer awareness of plastic pollution and encouraged other stakeholders and the government to organize cleanup and such (‘Brunei: Action and Progress on Marine Plastic Litter’, 2021; Green Brunei, 2021) while others report the rise of the bottled water industry, which coincidences with global environmental concerns on the use of plastics and yet demands for bottled water consumption are not abating (Pang, 2019).

(Uploaded in 2023)