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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the costly-takeout dept.

In an effort to reduce plastic bag pollution, Kenya has introduced tough laws that will result in a prison term of up to 4 years or a maximum of $40,000 for any Kenyan producing, selling or even using plastic bags, although initial enforcement will target manufacturers and suppliers.

"The East African nation joins more than 40 other countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use plastic bags, including China, France, Rwanda and Italy."

Bags can take 500-1000 years to decompose, in the mean time killing or harming wildlife and entering the human food chain.
What is being done about plastic bag pollution where you live?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:27PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:27PM (#560892)

    That's just an incentive for beggars to pick up plastic bags blowing down the street.

    Also, why couldn't a person be taxed for a new bag, but then receive [almost all of] that tax money back when taking that bag (or some minimum number of bags) to a recycling center?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:34PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:34PM (#560902)

    Because that would not do a whole lot to REDUCE the number of bags, and most plastic grocery bags are not even recyclable since they are very low grade plastic.

    The obvious rebuttal to giving .25 for returned bags is that someone would buy plastic bags in bulk and get probably 5x the return by taking them to the recycling center. Have a few people just shut their brains off today???

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:56PM (#560921)

      In that case, the bag manufacturer itself would have an incentive just to recycle its own bags immediately after making them, thereby proving once again the ineptitude of your government.

      Of course, if there's a "tax" on such bags (paid to the organization, possibly the government, that will return some money for recycling the bag), then such a perverse incentive would be removed; the manufacturer would just receive back slightly less than he paid, making it uneconomical to do so.

      Furthermore, people want to use bags to carry their damn stuff (especially gross stuff like raw meat), so their might well be a market of people who want to purchase those bags for a price that allows the manufacturer pass on the costs of that "tax" to consumers—thereby pushing the burden of dealing with the "tax" to each person who wants a bag.