Nepal's Ban on Production and Use of Plastic Bags Comes into Effect
thehimalayantimes.com
thehimalayantimes.com
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.
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.
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...
> 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?
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.
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.
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?