The significant negative impact on the environment, health and economy of certain plastic products requires the establishment of specific legal frameworks to effectively reduce these negative effects. These frameworks should largely ensure the circular use or substitution of plastics and the drastic reduction and phasing out of single-use applications.
The EU funded Water and Environment Support project (WES) will support the Tunisian government to reinforce measures taken to address single-use plastic packaging challenge.
The main objective of this activity, that officially kicked-off on the 17th of October 2022, will be to identify the bottlenecks (technical, legislative, financial, etc.) in the application of the regulations prohibiting plastic bags (Decree n° 32 of January 16, 2020.) and propose actions for overcoming these constraints. The WES team of experts will also propose a roadmap for an extension of measures aimed at reducing and banning, if possible, certain single-use plastics in Tunisia.
During the kick-off meeting, WES experts presented the objectives, planned activities and expected results of the activity. Discussions focused on Tunisia’s current priorities and projects to reduce the impacts of plastic pollution and marine litter through the implementation of a plastic-free coastal strategy and improved solid waste management. The contribution of WES and synergies with all national and regional efforts of other projects to national and Mediterranean efforts to combat plastic pollution were also discussed. The meeting was attended by stakeholders from the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Commerce, the Waste Management Agency (ANGed), the International Center for Environmental Technologies (CITET), the Technical Center for Packaging (Packtec), as well as representatives of the World Bank and the EU Delegation to Tunisia.
The activity is expected to conclude in about 9 months’ time.
