China bans plastic bags

January 8th, 2008 Alex

China just announced that they are going to be banning thin plastic bags from being handed out at stores and supermarkets. The cabinet said that finance athorities should also consider raising taxes that discourage the production and sale of plastic bags. China uses up to 3 billion plastic bags a day and refines 5 million tons of crude oil every year to make the plastics that are used for packaging. Several different countries around the world have been doing something similar in banning bags and taxing the production of thin plastic bags. Previous entries about plastic bag bans are here and here.

Reusable bags are going to be popular and will most likely be a new trend for grocery shoppers around the world. In China and Hong Kong, big red, white, and blue bags (pictured above) have been used forever and were very popular. Maybe we will start seeing more of those again. Locally, stores such as Costco and Ikea have been selling their own reusuable bags and those seem to work pretty well. Costco has always reused old boxes to put your items in which was pretty nice. I have seen department stores selling their own reusable bags as well. The problem with having a reusuable bag at department stores however, seems like an easy way to shoplift though if items do not have the bar code sensor thing on them.

via Reuters

Entry Filed under: Environment