Most of the people around the world face regular challenges from the plastic bags and Somaliland is one of these countries. It is even worse than that in Somaliland because people are totally dependent on products made from plastic bags without being conscious about environmental damages and problems.

 Plastic bags are everywhere in Somaliland, main cities, major regions, villages, rural and remote areas and are available in many different forms: they come in low, medium and high density Polyethylene and none of these forms are useful to people despite carrying goods and services from place to place. In Somaliland, plastic bags count the second major environmental problem after deforestation that poses huge threat to the beauty and scene of the country. Actually, there are three main challenges related to plastic bags in Somaliland. Firstly, 80% of all waste plastic bags in the country are all available in the major cities, scattered everywhere blocking our ventilation systems. As a result, the beauty of the cities becomes spoilt.

Secondly, plastic bags have various types including plastic sheets, plastic coverings and plastic cartoons where each of these types has its own negative consequences. For instance, plastic sheet come in two forms long and short, and you can see a very broad plastic sheet covering plastic bags in the rubbish dumping sites leaving bad smell, prevent water on the surface to dry and later, due to the rays of the sun becomes small pieces flying to everywhere in the city. Others types listed above have the same effect and the impact is more disastrous as plastic sheets. Thirdly, plastic bags are not only threatening the environment, livestock both in the urban and rural areas eat plastic bags as they smell food from the plastic bags and this damaged digestive system of the livestock and lowers their health and sometimes cause death to them.

Problems associated with plastic bags cannot be summarized here because Somaliland is one of the rare places where thousands of tons of plastic bags are only used for carrying goods from a place to place without reusing and recycling the plastic bags. However, the government and other youth-led environmental protection platforms need to play their role in combating plastic bags.