White trash - banning plastic supermarket bags
China is in the forefront of banning white plastic grocery bags, favoring cloth
bags, instead. Their goal is to cut waste and to conserve resources. Rising
environmental concerns and rising gasoline prices couple to encourage
consumers to make the choice to bring cloth bags along when they shop.
Beginning June 1, 2008, in time for the Summer Olympic Games, Beijing businesses
will no longer provide the free bags. Thicker plastic bags will be available for sale
and use, but businesses will be prohibited from manufacturing, selling or using bags that
are less than .025 millimeters thick.
Other countries that have already passed legislation to ban the bags are Ireland,
Taiwan and parts of South Africa. Last year, San Francisco became the first U.S.
city to ban petroleum-based plastic bags.
Plastic bags clog landfills and pollute our oceans. The approximately
100 billion plastic bags that are used each year are the equivalent of 17 million
barrels of oil down the drain.
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