China to ban plastic bags.

[progressoid]

SHANGHAI—Thin plastic bags are used for everything in China and the Chinese use up to three billion of them a day--an environmentally costly habit picked up by shopkeepers and consumers in the late 1980s for convenience over traditional cloth bags. Fruit mongers weigh produce in them, tailors stuff shirts into them, even street food vendors plunk their piping hot wares directly into see-through plastic bags that do nothing to protect one's hands from being burned or coated in hot grease. They even have a special name for the plastic bags found blowing, hanging and floating everywhere from trees to rivers: bai si wu le, or "white pollution," for the bags' most common color.

Yet, the Chinese government is set to ban the manufacture and force shopkeepers to charge for the distribution of bags thinner than 0.025 millimeters thick as of June 1—and no one seems prepared. "I don't know what we'll do," Zhang Gui Lin, a tailor at Shanghai's famous fabric market, tells me through a translator. "I guess our shopping complex will figure it out and tell us what to buy to use as bags."

......

The Chinese government is banning production and distribution of the thinnest plastic bags in a bid to curb the white pollution that is taking over the countryside. The bags are also banned from all forms of public transportation and "scenic locations." The move may save as much as 37 million barrels of oil currently used to produce the plastic totes, according to China Trade News. Already, the nation's largest producer of such thin plastic bags, Huaqiang, has shut down its operations.

......

But it remains to be seen how strong enforcement will be. Specific penalties have not been set but will include fines. Other environmental efforts—such as a similar ban on disposable wooden chopsticks (a waster of trees) and so-called "green GDP," or gross domestic product, an effort to account for environmental costs when calculating overall economic development— fell by the wayside because they proved too difficult to implement and created significant opposition at the local level. It also remains to be seen whether some of the possible replacements—thicker or biodegradable plastic bags—will be any better.


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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=china-sacks-plastic-bags&sc=WR_20080527

[chknltl]

1. To the freepers who dismiss global warming due to the Chinese

What's that ya say? The Chinese aren't doing ANYTHING??? Are ya sure 'bout that one?
Way To Go China! :toast: America could learn by your example in this case.
knr

[ret5hd]

2. So when will manufacturing of .026 millimeter thick plastic bags start?

(don't think i'm dissin' this effort, because i applaud it)

[progressoid]

4. That was my thought as well

Seems like they left a couple loop-holes in the law.

[samdogmom]

3. Once again...our country has been put to shame!

The U.S. could outlaw these things too--or require them to be biodegradable!

It's pretty embarrassing when China gets it and the dubya administration DOESN'T!