From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com:
Kenya, of all places, has enacted the world’s strongest ban on those flimsy single-use plastic bags. While the law is mostly targeted at manufacturers and suppliers, police can go after individuals, although the government indicated that it would go easy on “the common man’’. And, The Washington Post reports, the penalties “could include four years in prison and up to {the equivalent of} $40,000 in fines.’’
Some other African nations have imposed full or partial bans on plasticbags, perhaps surprising given their poverty. However, they realize that their long-term prosperity depends in no small part on protecting their environment.
Probably for a long time to come, such a ban will only happen in a few localities in America. We usuallyvalue convenience above environmental protection. That’s too bad because the petrochemical-based bags cause tremendous plastic pollution, kill much wildlife that ingest them and clog sewers and other drains. There are toxic chemical compounds in these bag, and they take many, many years to decompose. These nasty if handy things ought be phased out by a proposed federal law to be enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, but don’t expect that from the Trump administration, whose EPA is all too often anti-environment. (More mountaintop removal for coal!)
