Plastic bag regulations under scrutiny
- Source: Global Times
- [09:16 August 12 2010]
- Comments
Food markets around the city are among the places where regulations requiring retailers to charge customers for plastic bags are regularly flouted. Photo: CFP
By Liu Dong
The results of a survey published Wednesday have called into question the effectiveness of the policy of charging for plastic bags, which came into effect two years ago.
Shanghai Statistics Bureau interviewed 1,000 Shanghai residents with a spread of ages representative of the city's population as a whole earlier this month. Although nearly 80 percent of those surveyed claimed they take their own plastic bags to supermarkets, only 37 percent did so when visiting wet markets.
"The key aim of the policy is to make reusing plastic bags a habit for people, regardless of whether or not they will have to pay for one at the place they are shopping. Otherwise, it will not be effective in the long term," Zhang Li, the researcher from Shanghai Statistics Bureau who conducted the survey, told the Global Times Wednesday.
The policy, issued by the State Council in June 2008, aimed to limit the use of plastic bags by forcing shops to charge customers for them. It also outlawed the use of very thin carrier bags, as they are more prone to breaking and therefore unlikely to be reused.
According to the survey, most supermarkets and big stores in the city charge customers from 0.1 yuan ($0.015) to 1 yuan ($0.15) per plastic bag, although many small shops and wet markets ignore the regulation.
Professor Dai Xingyi of Fudan University's department of environment and economics also questioned the policy based on his own research.
He and his team checked through the garbage produced by a range of residential compounds throughout the city, both before and after the policy was issued, and found barely any change in the number of plastic bags thrown out.
"I don't think the habit of using plastic bags in the city has changed at all," Dai said. "Rather than trying to solve the problem of plastic bag use by charging consumers, we should instead be looking at controlling the production of plastic bags. It's not simply a question about environmental consciousness."
According to the Shanghai City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Administration Bureau, there is no law regulating who can produce plastic bags, making it difficult for authorities to track how many are made. Based on the bureau's incomplete statistics, Shanghai produces around 30,000 to 40,000 tons of plastic bags per year, a figure that has changed little despite the policy.
