To declare the city of Sharm el-Sheikh free of single - use plastic bags, Dr. Yasmin Fouad, Minister of the environment, and Major General Khaled Fouda, governor of South Sinai,

held a press conference at the Old Market Square in Sharm el-Sheikh, in the presence of Mr. Alessandro fracassetti, UNDP Resident Representative, Mr. Tobias Krause-deputy ambassador of the European Union to Egypt, representatives of relevant authorities and media.

Dr. Yasmin Fouad, Minister of the environment, stressed that many measures have been taken to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags to protect the environment and marine life and for the benefit of citizens, foremost of which was the directives of His Excellency President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, president of the Republic, to prepare the national strategy to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags, which was adopted in عام and was the result of the work of all relevant ministries.

The minister of Environment added that the strategy requires the preparation of legislation and laws represented in the article ٢٧ of the law regulating waste management, which provides for a gradual reduction in the use of single-use plastic bags, pointing out that stopping the use of single-use plastic bags was not easy, but needed many efforts to change the prevailing culture and clarify the danger of bags to marine life and the environment and what the figures reflect, as each ton of plastic bags equals the loss and impact طن tons of marine organisms, pointing out that each ton of these organisms represent economic development, lost jobs and risks to the environmental system.

The minister of Environment explained that the gradual implementation of the national strategy came to clarify the milestones of the way, then a law, an article and an executive regulation explaining to us how to implement, roles and responsibilities, noting that at the climate conference we wanted to start with a pilot experiment as a model for implementation, and it had to meet many requirements, including that it should be beach to be models to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags, so Sharm el-Sheikh was the city.

The minister of Environment reviewed the executive procedures to reach Sharm el-shabkh free of single-use plastic bags, the most important of which are organizing workshops and awareness campaigns for citizens and owners of shops and restaurants in the city, to raise environmental awareness among citizens, shop owners and students, as well as the distribution of alternatives to plastic bags represented in bags made of fabrics through outlets, in addition to a car to distribute cloth bags.

The minister of Environment stressed that the real hero of reaching the declaration of Sharm el-Sheikh free of single-use plastic bags despite the legislative steps, regulatory framework and the governor's decision is the citizen's faith in the city and his strength to implement all those measures to protect the environment and marine life, thanking the volunteers who participated in the campaign to raise awareness among citizens to reduce the use of plastic bags to prevent plastic bags and replace them with cloth bags.