China has joined a few other countries and cities (including San Francisco) in instituting a plastic bag ban. From NPR:
"China may lag behind developed nations in tackling air and water pollution, but it has just taken the lead in one area: banning free plastic bags. In the future, Chinese shoppers will either have to buy them or bring their own. The move is expected to save China millions of barrels of oil each year."
Looks like Israel is doing something similar.
"It looks like 2008 will keep up last year’s momentum of phasing out plastic bags whenever possible. Just as the new year rang, word came around that a bill had been introduced in Israel that would mandate a charge to customers for every plastic bag taken at the supermarket.
The charge won’t affect every bag given to customers. Bags that contain fish, meat, poultry or fresh produce won’t incur any charge. But aside from that, every plastic bag given to a customer will incur a charge of 1 NIS which will be shown as a separate item on their receipt. The proposal will also subsidize for 6 months the sale of reusable bags, in order to create public awareness of the law.
As we’ve seen before, plastic bags are on the way out - and with good reason. These useless pieces of waste clog up landfill and make their way to rivers and oceans where they choke and kill wildlife. Starting with San Francisco, then Melbourne, China, and even manycountries in Africa, cities and countries are starting to rethink the millions of plastic bags that end up in landfill, all for just seconds of use between your grocery store and your kitchen.
And just to drive the point home- some numbers to ponder:
4 trillion to 5 trillion: Number of nondegradable plastic bags used worldwide annually.
430,000 gallons: Amount of oil needed to produce 100 million nondegradable plastic bags." (From Inhabitat)
Ireland didn't exactly ban plastic bags. They instituted a tax against them. According to the New York Times,
"In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog." (NY Times, Feb. 2, 2008)
In the Northeast, one major supermarket chain has given the customer the option of purchasing reusable canvas bags. Walmart also has canvas bags but the demand at that retail chain is not great.
Interesting, I kinda like the idea of instituting a tax on the bags vs outright banning them.
Sometimes you just won't have your canvas bag with you, like when you're wandering around drunk at 3am and need to buy some hard salami and bananas...
In Greece after discussing this for years, they will start a program in April 2009!!! Way too late in my opinion. 9 supermarkets will give customers the option to buy plastic or reusable bags. This is going to be a pilot program, by the way. After 3 months, if they deem it succesful, they will expand it in other supermarkets. I am baffled as to why they need to test its success. It's not like it hasn't been done elsewhere succesfully. Just adopt a succesfull program and go for it damn it! I don't understand what is taking so long. With Greece's ecological footprint, we cannot afford to wait...
until there is a ban, here is a link to some ideas of crafts you can make with plastic bags:
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2007/08/plastic_bag_crafts.html
I support a ban/tax on plastic bags. I see them everywhere, even in the trees when I go hiking in the woods. There is just little reason to use them really other than laziness when the cost savings stores would see from dropping them and encouraging customers to bring their own reusable bags would add up quickly. Of course, waiting in line would get a little longer in the US as these bags are packed. I think that is one of the bars from keeping the US stores, like Walmart, from adopting such policies.
