The Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs (MOEW) is preparing legislative bills aimed at limiting the usage of the plastic bags in Bulgaria. The plastic bags are not being recycled and therefore represent a huge source of pollution, private broadcaster bTV reported on June 5.

The plastic bags in Bulgaria can be recycled in the factories for recycling plastic but collecting is difficult, environment consultant Todor Nedkov told The Sofia Echo on June 5. He said that the packaging waste recovery organisations are recycling the thicker bags, but was not that easy to collect the wide-spread thin plastic bags used by most Bulgarian shops.

Plastic bags are very cheap and thin, which means that there was too little material, that being the reason why the recycling factories were not interested in buying them, one industry source told The Sofia Echo. Only a few factories in Bulgaria can recycle plastic bags, even counting the plastic bag producers.

On June 3, Environment Minister Djevdet Chakurov officially announced the start of preparation of the legislative initiatives to restrict usage of plastic bags during a meeting on the occasion of World Environment Day, June 5. Currently MOEW experts are studying practices used in other countries to limit the usage of plastic bags.

"In any case, usage of paper packaging and packaging from materials that are easy to recycle has to be anticipated, as the plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose once in the environment," Chakurov said.