Caritas Pakistan distributes eco-bags to protect environment

(June 06, 2012) Caritas Pakistan on Tuesday, distributed cloth bags in Karachi, as part of an ongoing environmental campaign against the use of harmful plastic carrier-bags. The Catholic Church’s social arm handed white eco-friendly bags to more than 100 participants of a World Environment Day event at the Holy Family Hospital Auditorium. Each bag carries messages promoting green issues and warnings about the harmful effects plastic bags have on the environment. The Catholic Charity says it aims to distribute 2,000 bags among Church-run institutions and schools in the port city. “As many as 80,000 polythene bags are given out every five minutes in Pakistan; a single department store uses an average of 4,000 in a week. The problem is that these bags are used once and then go straight into landfills, or are thrown into the street, or in the sea,” said Dominic Gill, executive secretary of Caritas Pakistan Karachi. “These bags are now littering our beaches. Not only are they ruining their beauty, they are killing marine life,” he said. The deaths of hundreds of fish, turtles and other animals found in Keenjhar Lake, Karachi’s main freshwater source, a few months ago were partly caused by discarded plastic bags, he added.