, December 30, 2015 (AllAfrica) – As the country continues to battle the heaps of polyethylene bags that litter all over the country, government has said it was not in a hurry to place a total ban on its use nationwide.

Minister of Environment Amina Mohammed told newsmen during an interaction on the just ended COP 21 meeting in Paris, France that: "Agreed, the issue of polyethylene is a huge one as it is a menace to the environment but it will be a mistake to ban its use now without putting in place a sustainable alternative plan."

Mohammed noted that the piles of polyethylene that gather at dump sites and other locations across the country had gone from bad to worse and acknowledged that the threat from it was serious but that government was working on the best way to address it.

Daily Trust recalls that the former Minister of Environment, Hadiza Mailafia, had set January 1st 2014 as the deadline for the government to enforce a complete ban on the use of polyethylene in the country.

The ban however was ineffective and could not be enforced as stakeholders ignored it saying government was unable to provide alternatives for them.

A study conducted in Akure by A. O. Akinro et.al <http://et.al/> of Auchi Polytechnic and published in the Global Journal of Science Frontier Research Agriculture & Biology showed that polyethylene is generated more during the dry season months than the wet season.

The result also showed that table water sachet topped the list of cellophane wastes generated. This is because it is cheap and consumed throughout the year with very little seasonal variation. Types of cellophane generation at home and markets also displayed a very interesting pattern.

The study showed that in the market, polyethylene for assorted items was the least (51,000), followed by biscuits (50,863), ice cream sachets (81,526) and table water sachets (96,853).

Cameroon banned nonbiodegradable plastic bags measuring less than 60 microns (two-thousandths of an inch) in thickness last year. It is one of over 20 African countries to outlaw plastic bags in some way, but the effort to get rid of the bags has been foiled by smugglers who sneak the bags into Cameroon, hidden in legal shipments or hauled across the border on footpaths from neighbouring countries, including Nigeria.