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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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Kenya Introduces Big Penalties for Plastic Bags
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:08PM (2 children)
Poop bags are a problem, I don't see an easy solution there.
For grocery shopping, a decent reusable bag should last decades. If you are a responsible person and manage to use that bag the majority of the time then in a single year you will already have saved on the physical material side. Each reusable bag load is 2-5X the capacity of the crappy plastic bags, and often those crappy bags are doubled up anyway to prevent them from breaking. So in some cases 4-10 shitty plastic bags are saved per use of the reusable. Over the lifetime of the reusable bag (which can also be used in other situations) I can't imagine this argument as being even slightly plausible.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:03PM
The solution is simple: don't own a dog, especially in an urban setting.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @03:46PM
My girlfriend uses biodegradable bags for her dog. I mean I guess they're still plastic of some form, but if the point is to prevent environmental impact those should work.
People have no faith in the strength of modern plastics. I pile those disposable bags full until literally nothing else will fit, and I've never had one break. And I never double-bag. I'll throw three 64oz juice bottles in one bag, and toss a six-pack of small glass bottles on top of them, and carry it up three flights of stairs. Those bags are a hell of a lot stronger than you think.
The reusable bags use as many resources to produce and supply as a couple hundred disposable ones. I'd have to use that thing every time I go shopping for several decades (I got shopping about once a month) before it would break even. I'd almost certainly lose or break the bag before then. A better approach is to reuse the disposable plastic bags, although you *might* want to start double-bagging them after a couple uses if you use them the way I do... ;)
http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/reusable-bags-only-superior-to-plastic-if-you-reuse-them-a-lot/ [opb.org]