Plastic Bag Ban in South Korea Goes Into Affect on April 1st
So does anyone have any issues with the plastic bag ban that is about to go into affect in South Korea?:
Use of disposable plastic bags will be banned at large retailers nationwide, starting next month, as part of the government’s efforts to reduce waste and conserve the environment, the Ministry of Environment said Wednesday.
Korea Times
The ministry said about 2,000 hypermarkets and approximately 11,000 big supermarkets with sales floor space of 165 square meters or more will be prohibited from offering disposable plastic bags to their clients from April 1.
Department stores and large shopping malls are also subject to the revised enforcement regulation of the Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources, the ministry said.
Retailers that violate the ban could face fines of up to 3 million won (around $2,644).
You can read more at the link, but with any law in Korea it will interesting to see how stringently it is enforced.
The stores will stock the reusable bags near the cash registers, and there will be a bunch of folks smacking themselves on the forehead and running back out to their car.
Selling shopping bags at ₩2000 per bag will be a swift business for the first couple months, then settle down again.
I had forgotten that France had banned plastic shopping bags back in 2016. When I was in France last October, I tried asking the cashier at one grocery for a bag, and she looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head.
I think we’ll all learn to improvise, adapt, and overcome once the Korean ban happens. Just remember to clean your reusable bags; they’re apparently a great place for bacteria and other pathogens to stage their massive orgies.
Yhe plastic bags are often reused for kitchen and bathroom wastes. Expect Korea to start smelling like a Third World nation as people toss these directly into garbage bins that will now need to be supplied to everyone.
Not to mention, reusable cloth bags have been shown to be festering sewers after a couple months. This is a much worse move than transitioning into biodegradeable options for disposable bags
We carry bags in our car as here in the Netherlands they aren’t banned, but you cannot give them away they have to be purchased. Our grocery solution has Ben to transition to a collapsible crate for groceries. I guess it could become a cesspool too,I haven’t broken out my junior lab tech kit.
Let’s see how AAFES and the Commissary complies and adapts. Will it affect the need for Commissary baggers?
Think it was 2014 (?) when a mandate began to wear seatbelts on buses. Yeah, that never happened.
The article reads the ban is on “disposable” plastic bags, but still be allowed for wet items. I think the intent is to move to biodegradable plastic bags which split open when wet. [CH, don’t go there.]