Seen at Inhabitat:
It seems that plastic shopping bags are really on the way out. It started with San Francisco, Hong Kong, then Melbourne and other cities, and now, beginning in July, all plastic shopping bags in the entire country of China will no longer be free. As part of China’s attempts to reduce their extreme pollution problem, the policy will call for a small charge for plastic bags in China that must be shown clearly in all supermarket receipts.
Furthermore, ultra-thin plastic bags are now banned from being produced at all. As part of this effort, the government is encouraging the use of reusable bags and cloth sacks, and increasing efforts to recycle all plastic bags still in use.
If 2007 was the year that my household switched to CFLs, perhaps 2008 will be the year that we start using cloth bags in lieu of plastic…to a certain extent, anyway.
All those plastic bags we pick up along the way do, after all, come in handy when walking the dog….