Say No to Plastic Bags

Plastic bags are surely the best option for consumer while doing their grocery shopping. Popularity of plastic bags is because it has good features such as light weight, resistant to degradation, durable and low cost (Joseph et al., 2016). Their large scale of production already started back in 1950s (Geyer et al., 2017). It has been more than 60 years, and plastic bags definitely have left a big impact on human life. From big shopping stores to retailer, all use plastic bags as carrier bags.

Until today, the production of plastic bags still increases day by day. However, plastic bags have been contributing to many negative effects on the Earth by releasing toxic gases to the atmosphere, causing litter and become a breeding ground for mosquito especially in rainy season. Moreover, plastic bags also cause another problem such as choking drains (Joseph et al., 2016).

According to Rebecca Hoskins (2008, cited in Zen et al. 2016, p.275), every plastic carrier bag that has ever been produced is still on the planet, in a landfill, hedgerows, or floating in the sea killing over 100,000 seabirds, dolphin, seals, whales and turtles every year.

It shows how plastic bag can cause damage on our Earth. Because of this, many countries have taken action to ban plastic bags. BBC News (2008) reported, South Africa as the first country to ban ultra-thin plastic bags and imposing taxes on thicker ones in 2003.

Slowly, this act became a global trend as many other country starts to follow their footstep in banning plastic bags. In some countries they ban all types of plastic bags and encourage the society to bring Eco bags for shopping in stores, but in certain countries like Australia, they come out with a goal to phase out single-use bags and to promote reusable bags and recycling (Kamaruddin & Yusuf, 2012).

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Following other country’s footstep, Penang voluntarily started to make a campaign on ‘No plastic bag day’ every Monday starting at 6th July 2009, later followed by Sarawak on 6th September 2009 (Zen et al., 2016). In 2011, Malaysia officially announced that every Saturday is a day without a plastic bag. According to Shahariah Asmuni et al. (2015), this program was designed to minimize the amount of improper disposal of used plastic bags that caused environmental degradation.

This program has been spread widely not only in every state, but it is been supported by some universities in Malaysia. For example, Universiti Sains Malaysia launched a ‘Say No To Plastic’ campaign on 14 August 2008 that involve 22,000 people in the campus. Programs on spreading awareness, knowledge on plastic pollution and aimed to change consumer behaviour has received attention from some students in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu.

As a university that aim to be a green campus, a few of student’s in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu have taken an action to establish an environmental program that go by the tagline ‘Say No To Plastic Bags’. Through this program, it is expected to result in increasing students’ pro-environmental behaviour. The alteration on students’ pro-environmental behaviour in this program can be indicated by their actions after ‘Say No To Plastic Bags’ program was established or made known to them.

Although this program has been conducted since 11 Nov 2017, it appears that it has not made a positive impact especially in the cafeteria areas where the poster the campaign can be found. This study aimed to find out the real factors on why the program still doesn’t meet its objective.