COMMENT | The other day, during a stakeholder engagement event, one NGO representative was disappointed to see plastic water bottles still being supplied at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (Picc), despite repeated reminders.

I recalled him saying: ‘‘I thought Nahrim (National Water Research Institute of Malaysia) has come up with commercial potable rainwater and the Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Ministry is promoting it? Why do we still see plastic water bottles here? We talked about this before!’’

Ideally speaking, we want to phase out all single-use and non-biodegradable products and replace them with eco-friendly alternatives wherever possible.

However, this should be done gradually because...