Our Desk | One pataca per plastic bag

Julie Zhu

Environmental protection is a never ending topic among people’s conversations when they discuss the development of Macau. This notwithstanding, recycling has also been a headache for the heavily populated territory which is in fact one of the world’s most densely populated regions.

Thoughts on how to help the city improve its recycling system accumulate almost daily. One of them, which has been talked about hundreds of times, is to start charging for plastic shopping bags at the supermarket.

At the end of January, the Director of the Environment Protection Bureau (DSPA), Raymond Tam Vai Man, informed that the government was considering the implementation of a new policy whereby every plastic shopping bag would cost one pataca, paid for by the customers, adding that the price had been widely accepted by the general public during a consultation period.

Furthermore, Tam informed that the final charge would only be settled when a law is passed, which means that it is still unknown whether Macau will charge one pataca for a plastic shopping bag.

Regardless, it sounds like a good start for the city moving towards a better social status.

In a tier 4 Chinese city situated in a province lagging behind economically when compared to Macau, a chain supermarket charges RMB0.2 for their smallest plastic shopping bag, and RMB0.5 for the biggest.

In that city, a female cleaning worker earns approximately RMB1,500 per month. A comparable salary is given to a cashier who works for an international chain supermarket.

In turn, in the neighboring region Hong Kong, the law requires shops to charge at least HKD0.5 per bag.

If Macau ultimately starts charging one pataca per bag, the city will stand out in terms of efforts directed to restricting plastic bag usage.

Nevertheless, one should still worry about the plastic bag situation in street markets.

For example, just across the border at the Gongbei food market, which is similar to the Red Market in Macau, plastic shopping bags are free of charge and given away by every single vendor. In other words, the situation remains the same as before China launched its plastic restrictions.

The only places where an effective plastic bag reduction has been conducted are indeed big chain stores, especially supermarkets.

How Macau will try to enforce this policy in street markets after it starts charging fees in supermarkets remains an unsolved mystery to me.

Moreover, another concern of mine is that charging for plastic bags, like any other environmental friendly project, can only raise awareness within people who have already thought a bit about strategies to protect the environment.

In addition, Macau is a tourism city. It welcomes hundreds of thousands of tourists nearly every single day. What about these tourists? Will they bring their own bags to do groceries? Or will they simply ignore the negligible price to pay?

How many people will consider reusing bags? Is one pataca enough to change behaviour? Keep in mind that Macau fines a minimum of MOP300 for unruly behaviours such as spitting or throwing trash on the ground, but many people still do such things.

My last concern is how to make sure the younger generations will do some good instead of inheriting bad environmental habits. If the latter hypothesis prevails, problems will never be solved or reduced; young generations will grow older and continue making the same mistakes as their elders.