New businesses in Talamanca must commit to the prohibition of the use of plastic straws in order to obtain the municipal patent.
The Municipal Council of that canton approved last January, unanimously, a motion to fight to declare itself free of said product. Since then, according to Mayor Marvin Gómez, about 80% of businesses no longer use it.
“We are trying to collaborate with the environment, with the prohibition of the use of straws that the damage does to the animals so much. Already almost in Talamanca 80% of businesses do not give those straws, and we want the measure to be total at the level canton”, said the local ruler.
Currently, the Municipality of Talamanca does not have penalties or penalties for those businesses that violate the rule; however, they currently have a commission that is analyzing whether it is necessary to establish them. “We, for example, give permission to new businesses, and then now meet that point which is one of the requirements to be able to extend the patent”, said the mayor. That commission is also analyzing whether it is necessary to carry the ban on the use of other products such as plastic bags.
According to Green Peace data, only 1 of these straws can take 500 years to decompose; In addition, between 40% and 60% of turtles ingest plastics, and in some bird species this percentage rises to 93%. More than 1 million birds and more than 100 thousand marine mammals die each year as a result of all plastics that reach the sea.
Approximately 320 thousand tons of garbage that is thrown into the sea annually corresponds only to straws of this material. At the moment, in the Legislative Assembly, there are several projects on the topic of the use of single-use plastics that were proposed by the deputies Erwen Masis, Paola Vega, and José María Villalta.
