“Polycarbonates are safe, food grade plastics. BPA has passed a battery of tests that allow them to be excluded from the list of 34 substances that are found to be hazardous to foods, and thus prohibited from use as food packaging,” Ir. Zainal said.
“There is no urgency for it, and there is a discriminatory tendency against a specifc type of drinking water packaging. There is no data available to support this BPA labeling of large drinking water bottles. It’s too early for this; there is no need to hurry to approve this policy,” Prof. Sulaeman concurred.
Read: Microplastics Threatens Marine’s Life, Indonesia Needs to Push Transition Into a Circular Economy
Another misconception in this policy is related to the plan to label single-use plastic water bottles “BPA free”. “That’s absolutely redundant! The material used to make single-use water bottles is PET, not BPA. In other words, what needs to be written in these packaging is ‘contains ethylene glycol’, because that’s what PET plastic is made of, with the addition of antimony. The Government has an earlier policy of prohibiting the use of single-use plastic products, but now they suddenly encourage the use of single-use plastic water dispenser bottles. That’s simply irrational,” Zainal sighed. (est)