Note that this appears to be a ban on the thin, single user plastic bags only.
We've had a similar ban here in South Australia for a number of years now. It has worked quite well - one either remembers to bring a bag when grocery shopping, or buys a reusable one then.
Since July 1st, France has banned them too. They were already forbidden is supermarkets anyways. Note that the biodegradable corn-based plastic bags are still allowed.
The Netherlands has this as well since this year. Putting a price on plastic bags actually seems to change people's behaviour — for the good. The law doesn't even stipulate a minimum price; as long as plastic bags aren't free, people will bother to bring their own.
Interestingly, the "biodegradable" bags seem kind of scam-ish. Apparently the PLA (corn based) ones only break down in a "commercial" composting environment. According to this article, that means 10 days at some specific temperature (the article says "70 degrees" but no more).
Only cottoned onto this personally, after noticing the "compostable" bags I'd been using to hold vegetable scraps... weren't compositing in the home compost bin even many months later (nearly a year now). :/
From link:
One noticeable success in Ireland's environmental track record was the introduction of a plastic bag levy in 2002, the first country in the world to do so. All consumers were required to pay 15c for a plastic bag; this led to an immediate decrease of over 90% in the amount of plastic bags in circulation. From 328 bags per inhabitant per year when the levy was introduced, usage fell to 21 bags per capita.
Scotland has a similar system. It has also worked well; I'd conclude it had not worked well if there were ongoing serious complaints, or the litter problem of carrier bags continued.
I hope the government enforces this rule to the fullest extent. We also need to regulate those water bottles that are tossed in every corner of the streets.
Because I think you shouldn't take deciding what other people are allowed to do lightly. Such things should only be done in extreme cases, like self defense or, perhaps, to prohibit ruining nature through littering.
Offer a return payment for them of a few cents each. It's how a lot of highways & cities in the US stay clean of aluminum cans - the homeless pick them up and turn them in for a profit.
Exactly. In Germany, return payment is 0.25 EURO and it works great. Most people at home collect them and bring to supermarket. Those who throw them on streets, homeless people are more than happy to pick up and cash in. Win-win situation in every angle.
They are nice thick ones as well. I usually bring one or two home from Germany, as they are far better suited for reuse when hiking than the crappy ones you get here.
What a hysterical reaction. It's not dictatorship. They can vote out the ruling government any time. Some things require enforcement. My post people are happy with such enforcement that comes with a small cost to personal liberty that benefits pretty much everyone.
Ireland did something similar years ago and the results were incredible. An almost overnight transformation of the cleanliness of the cities and countryside. Nobody would like to reverse the decision now despite significant opposition before-hand. Same with the smoking ban.
> Ireland did something similar years ago and the results were incredible. An almost overnight transformation of the cleanliness of the cities and countryside. Nobody would like to reverse the decision now despite significant opposition before-hand.
Are you suggesting that the issue of debate was whether it would lead to less litter? That's almost obvious, isn't it? Surely, the question must rather be whether it is morally acceptable for us to impose such a rule on other people.
Have you ever been to Kathmandu? Non-degradable rubbish is problem in many places, but I don't remember one where there would be so much of it littered on the side of roads for kilometers at end.
I'm trying to nail down what the actual issue of debate is, or should be. You are merely sharing your opinion on that issue. That is fine, but beside the point I was getting at.
Yes, deciding what others are allowed to do is something I am morally uncomfortable with. That is not to say that I have come up with something else that is not also questionable.
In any case, I do think that we should strive toward having just a bare minimum of laws. However, it seems to be too much fun to make laws, once you get in a position to do so, for people to abstain from it.
What are you talking about? Do you wish to live in a human society? Litter of plastic bags is an externality - all this law does is to impose the costs on those who incur it.
I think this is pure free markets are the only moral structure, coercion is immoral, etc. ideology. I do not find it compelling because adherents' apply the "coercion is wrong" absolutely when it comes to governments enforcing it through fines, but deny economic coercion applies when e.g
a bank charges overdraft or late fees no matter how ludicrous.
There is a suggestion that ultimately a bank doesn't put you in jail, where governments can do that if you continue to not pay fines. But increasingly governments take unpaid fines from income tax refunds or other mechanisms for collection rather than consider outstanding fines a criminal offense rather than civil.
Also most free market adherents opposed to government coercion forget that contractual obligations are only enforceable through government coercion (unless they would like to go back to the time of private armies).
As far as I can see, that is orthogonal to the issue at hand.
> all this law does is to impose the costs on those who incur it.
We might consider littering to be immoral, and might therefore feel that we have a right to prohibit others from doing it, but it does not follow that we have a right to prohibit people from using, selling, owning or manufacturing bags (or fine or tax them for doing those things).
I would say your moral failing is thinking that "others" is somehow separable from "self" in the abstract. If I can decide for myself, then I can certainly decide for others: that's the whole reason I want to be good at making decisions. If I'm only allowed to decide things for myself, then what's the point? I'm basically a corpse who hasn't gotten cold yet. In what way should I contribute to the betterment of human life, if I can't tell other people what I've learned that they should do?
You are an individual. But you're also a member of your family, a member of your country, a member of your species, and a living creature. Your identify is not confined to your individuality. You speak English not because of your individuality, but because of your culture. It is as much a part of you as you of it.
With that said, you have a responsibility to decide what others should do. You have a responsibility to make sure those decisions are correct, and a responsibility to enforce them insofar as they are correct and such enforcement doesn't undermine our humanitarian goals. And instead of being overly-conservative in the face of the possibility that you are mistake, take comfort in knowing that experiments can fail, and that this doesn't mean they shouldn't be undertaken. Make decisions, enforce them, and if they're wrong, you change your mind later. The only alternative is stagnation or 'progress by accident'.
>In any case, I do think that we should strive toward having just a bare minimum of laws.
Why should this take priority over having the most correct laws?
> Surely, the question must rather be whether
> it is morally acceptable for us to impose such
> a rule on other people.
When people are not considering the effects of their actions and possible harm done by them - litter, environmental - because it doesn't benefit them to do so, then it's the elected government's duty to step in and impose such rules. People have already made clear through their actions that in the absence of those rules, they won't behave on the best interests of the community.
> Perhaps Nepal could improve child mortality first even if its not hipster enough for the west.
Yes, the government should simply ban child mortality. Why didn't they think of something that simple? Also, until child mortality is solved, they shouldn't go after any low hanging fruit. What's the point?
Sounds like weird ideological nonsense. The metaphor doesn't work. In democracies people do routinely choose to proscribe certain behaviors, the ethical problem is when a minority is disproportionally impacted, or a when new class of discrimination is created. And neither if those things are the case here. The reality is the free market alone has not innovated the necessary incentive to reduce this kind of waste. Doing so at the source appears much more effective than crediting the customer a dime per bag reused, or even charging $1 per plastic bag used.
This is anecdotal and all but I am not so sure ban on plastic bags is that effective (though the figures given for Ireland seem substantial):
The free, single-use plastic bags were perfect for our 20 litre garbage bin. Now I have to buy 30 litre garbage bags (the minimum size available) so, on that alone, the change means we are using 50% more plastic.
We still accumulate reusable bags, though at a lower rate. So much so that I have to start using them as garbage bags, to thin the herd. The takeaway from this is that the 10 cent charge is way too low.
The reusable bags were great for other things also: taking things for recycling, wet clothes from swimming, going to beach, etc. The reusable bags are bulky so other types of plastic bag are pressed into use and hoarded.
So we got at least two uses out of the previous bags: one trip home with groceries and another trip taking out garbage/recycling.
What did make a substantial difference to our household's consumption of plastic bags was that some supermarkets (here in Portugal) offered, free of charge, heavy-duty, hold-all style bags for a short period of time. These are long lived and infinitely preferable to the single-use sort.
I am confused. You seem to be saying that the law had negative consequences for you and that you therefore think the cost needs to be increased to correct you into the intended behavior.
The goal of the legislation was reduced use of plastic bags. I am saying that at the rate we accumulate reusable bags, the price of 10 cents is simply too low to force people to remember to carry a reusable bag when visiting the grocery store.
for me this is correct.. now me the consumer simply pays more.. once as a supermarket doesn't pay for it and does not lower their prices and twice as I as a consumer now pay for a rubbish bag.
no reduction in plastic bags, but usually more plastic waste as as they are bigger.
supermarkets, plastics manufacturers, and oil companies get more profits, ordinary consumers pay more, mother nature a slap in the face..
He is saying that the result is the opposite of the intent of the law. Telling a single individual to stop using the bags shows it doesn't work. It's like yelling at a user during user testing that they should just click the obvious button.
Laws should have A/B testing before rolling out to everyone.
In that plastic bag bans with the same basic parameters were applied in a few cities before spreading, in this particular case there was a kid of A/B testing before they were applied to everyone (actually, still pretty fast from everyone).
The argument upthread is that one household's behavior wasn't what the law intended, which is hardly a compelling counterargument.
In the US Trader Joe's sells reusable $0.99 bags which seem incredibly popular -- I get maybe 50-100 uses out of them, and I see them frequently at other stores.
For anyone who drives to the grocery, it's easy to just leave bags in the trunk. Anything smaller than a dedicated trip usually fits in my backpack.
Cambridge implemented a similar ban and just having someone ask before giving me a bag has resulted in less waste. Seems like an easy win to me, the only people I hear complaining are nutjobs.
Is it not possible to get the old-style brown paper bags instead?
Quite honestly, I would prefer to go back to the paper bags, since they hold more, are sturdier, and are biodegradable. Although I would have to come up with a new solution for dog waste...
Is plastic vs paper bags really that clear-cut an issue? I get the recycle/decompose angle, but I would have thought that paper bags would use much more energy (embedded + transport), release many more chemicals, and cause much more deforestation. I suppose Nepal is probably optimizing for the trash reduction benefit
Plastic bags are actually more environmentally friendly for the issue you mentioned. Their production uses far less energy and water which results in fewer CO and CO2 emissions. The only negative impact of plastic bags is that people litter.
> The only negative impact of plastic bags is that people litter.
Of course this does happen. However, even if people were meticulous about putting their used plastic bags in trash receptacles, there are still _lots_ of ways for plastic bags to make their way into the environment: trash cans get overturned, trash bags sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up are torn open by animals, etc.
Use of plastic bags causes huge other issues, apart from just the energy consumed to make and transport them. They are often thrown anywhere after use, are light, so fly around, even to medium distances, clog up all sorts of places, including land and water bodies. In India (and other countries where cattle roam free, even in towns), animals that eat them (or rather bite them to get at some food in the bags), are sometimes found choked/suffocated to death, cows particularly. Also, a big one, poor/homeless people collect plastic waste (not only bags, also plastic pieces used for packing, thermocol, etc.) and in winter burn them at night to keep themselves warm as well as to cook. That causes a lot of pollution, including, I've read, toxic dioxins from burning plastic, which is banned to do in many developed countries. I do know that preventing some of these things are only solving symptoms or superficial causes. But they are a problem all the same.
Nepal has a population of about 28m. Kathmandu has a population of about 1m.
> The Nepal Plastic Manufacturers’ Association said that whether the ban is imposed or not, 4,700,000 to 4,800,000 pieces of plastic bags would be consumed daily in Kathmandu itself.
That's a surprising number of bags for a small population. Everyone in Kathmandu uses more than 4 bags, every single day?
That is a remarkable statistic. Can you give an example or two of how they are used? Have they become the only way people transports lunches/books/etc?
61 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 82.8 ms ] threadWe've had a similar ban here in South Australia for a number of years now. It has worked quite well - one either remembers to bring a bag when grocery shopping, or buys a reusable one then.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/corn-plastic-to...
Only cottoned onto this personally, after noticing the "compostable" bags I'd been using to hold vegetable scraps... weren't compositing in the home compost bin even many months later (nearly a year now). :/
From link: One noticeable success in Ireland's environmental track record was the introduction of a plastic bag levy in 2002, the first country in the world to do so. All consumers were required to pay 15c for a plastic bag; this led to an immediate decrease of over 90% in the amount of plastic bags in circulation. From 328 bags per inhabitant per year when the levy was introduced, usage fell to 21 bags per capita.
Like most dictatorship style policies its also pointless and for theatrics only.
Perhaps Nepal could improve child mortality first even if its not hipster enough for the west.
Ireland did something similar years ago and the results were incredible. An almost overnight transformation of the cleanliness of the cities and countryside. Nobody would like to reverse the decision now despite significant opposition before-hand. Same with the smoking ban.
Are you suggesting that the issue of debate was whether it would lead to less litter? That's almost obvious, isn't it? Surely, the question must rather be whether it is morally acceptable for us to impose such a rule on other people.
So, do you mean that these people considered the outcome uncertain until it was tried?
Have you ever been to Kathmandu? Non-degradable rubbish is problem in many places, but I don't remember one where there would be so much of it littered on the side of roads for kilometers at end.
Yes? It's such a trivial imposition. This isn't Singapore caning people for chewing gum.
In any case, I do think that we should strive toward having just a bare minimum of laws. However, it seems to be too much fun to make laws, once you get in a position to do so, for people to abstain from it.
There is a suggestion that ultimately a bank doesn't put you in jail, where governments can do that if you continue to not pay fines. But increasingly governments take unpaid fines from income tax refunds or other mechanisms for collection rather than consider outstanding fines a criminal offense rather than civil.
That would depend entirely on whether the bank and its customer had agreed upon it before hand or not, wouldn't you say?
As far as I can see, that is orthogonal to the issue at hand.
> all this law does is to impose the costs on those who incur it.
We might consider littering to be immoral, and might therefore feel that we have a right to prohibit others from doing it, but it does not follow that we have a right to prohibit people from using, selling, owning or manufacturing bags (or fine or tax them for doing those things).
You are an individual. But you're also a member of your family, a member of your country, a member of your species, and a living creature. Your identify is not confined to your individuality. You speak English not because of your individuality, but because of your culture. It is as much a part of you as you of it.
With that said, you have a responsibility to decide what others should do. You have a responsibility to make sure those decisions are correct, and a responsibility to enforce them insofar as they are correct and such enforcement doesn't undermine our humanitarian goals. And instead of being overly-conservative in the face of the possibility that you are mistake, take comfort in knowing that experiments can fail, and that this doesn't mean they shouldn't be undertaken. Make decisions, enforce them, and if they're wrong, you change your mind later. The only alternative is stagnation or 'progress by accident'.
>In any case, I do think that we should strive toward having just a bare minimum of laws.
Why should this take priority over having the most correct laws?
When people are not considering the effects of their actions and possible harm done by them - litter, environmental - because it doesn't benefit them to do so, then it's the elected government's duty to step in and impose such rules. People have already made clear through their actions that in the absence of those rules, they won't behave on the best interests of the community.
Yes, the government should simply ban child mortality. Why didn't they think of something that simple? Also, until child mortality is solved, they shouldn't go after any low hanging fruit. What's the point?
The free, single-use plastic bags were perfect for our 20 litre garbage bin. Now I have to buy 30 litre garbage bags (the minimum size available) so, on that alone, the change means we are using 50% more plastic.
We still accumulate reusable bags, though at a lower rate. So much so that I have to start using them as garbage bags, to thin the herd. The takeaway from this is that the 10 cent charge is way too low.
The reusable bags were great for other things also: taking things for recycling, wet clothes from swimming, going to beach, etc. The reusable bags are bulky so other types of plastic bag are pressed into use and hoarded.
So we got at least two uses out of the previous bags: one trip home with groceries and another trip taking out garbage/recycling.
What did make a substantial difference to our household's consumption of plastic bags was that some supermarkets (here in Portugal) offered, free of charge, heavy-duty, hold-all style bags for a short period of time. These are long lived and infinitely preferable to the single-use sort.
no reduction in plastic bags, but usually more plastic waste as as they are bigger.
supermarkets, plastics manufacturers, and oil companies get more profits, ordinary consumers pay more, mother nature a slap in the face..
Laws should have A/B testing before rolling out to everyone.
The argument upthread is that one household's behavior wasn't what the law intended, which is hardly a compelling counterargument.
For anyone who drives to the grocery, it's easy to just leave bags in the trunk. Anything smaller than a dedicated trip usually fits in my backpack.
Quite honestly, I would prefer to go back to the paper bags, since they hold more, are sturdier, and are biodegradable. Although I would have to come up with a new solution for dog waste...
Of course this does happen. However, even if people were meticulous about putting their used plastic bags in trash receptacles, there are still _lots_ of ways for plastic bags to make their way into the environment: trash cans get overturned, trash bags sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up are torn open by animals, etc.
> The Nepal Plastic Manufacturers’ Association said that whether the ban is imposed or not, 4,700,000 to 4,800,000 pieces of plastic bags would be consumed daily in Kathmandu itself.
That's a surprising number of bags for a small population. Everyone in Kathmandu uses more than 4 bags, every single day?