Chile Becomes First Country In Americas To Ban Plastic Bags (ewn.co.za)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Eyewitness News: Chile's Senate has passed a bill that will prohibit the use of plastic bags in stores, with a vote in their House of Representatives overwhelmingly in favor of the measure, with 134 supporting the bill and one abstention. According to The Independent, the new law would give large retailers one year to phase out the use of plastic bags, and smaller businesses two years. This makes Chile the first country in the Americas to ban plastic bags, and officially recognize how important such a ban would be in the effort to reduce unnecessary single-use plastic waste.

At first, the measure was only meant to ban plastic bags in Patagonia, but it was approved by both the senate and president for the entire country. The Association of Plastic Industries registered Chile as using 3,400 million plastic bags per year, or 200 per person. Telesur reports that the Minister of the Environment, Marcela Cubillos, said the country needs a larger cultural change for people to start replacing plastic with reusable bags.

Comments

Why would any American country ban plastic bags?

[ITRambo]

The ocean pollution problem apparently comes from ten rivers located in Asia. North and South America are not killing whales. This is just another pointless feel-good move to show that "they care" in Chile.

What about soft drink bottles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soft drinks are a much worse waste of plastic. Every day at lunch i have a bottle. The weight of a bottle far exceeds that of a plastic bag (a hundred times?). A bag is an environmental problem as they travel and get places but really bottles are much worse problem surely? Soft drink companies really need to think about this as they have to be the worst offenders by a huge margin. Capitalism sure!y has to take some blame as if someone made it expensive to create these then a solution would be found? Future generations will look at us with shame and we obviously are just ignoring it but know better.

Re:Paper plants want to ban plastic bags.

[jeff4747]

Do your realize that your downsides also apply to plastic? Poisonous chemicals and decomposition in landfills are problems for plastic bags too.

Poop in the street

[Curunir_wolf]

I guess they don't get the unintended consequences of things like that. When they did that in California, they eliminated the only refuge for the homeless to dispose of their waste in a sanitary manner.

It's why there's so much human feces all over the streets and sidewalks in San Francisco and San Diego these days. And where the hepatitis outbreaks came from.