Maya Reports

It’s only January 11th, and already 4 different locations have enacted the plastic bag ban.

Italy started off the year, banning plastic bags as of January 1st.

The government of Italy has become the first in the European Union to outlaw the use of plastic bags by all retailers, signaling a large shift in a country which uses over 20 billion bags per year (400 per person) – an amount equal to 25 percent of the total produced and used in the entire EU.

On January 5th, the great city of Brownsville (15th largest city in Texas), joined the bandwagon, and today, both Kaua’i and Maui, HI, can proudly say that they’re part of the club.

After doing a little research, it turns out that a lot of other places ban plastic bags too.

2002 – Dhaka, Bangladesh enacted the ban.

2003 – rural Alaska & South Africa joined

2005 – Eritrea & the Republic of Somalialand

2006 – Rwanda, Tanzania, & Zanzibar

2007 – Kenya & Uganda, and San Francisco, CA

2008 – China

2009 – Buenos Aires, Argentina & American Samoa

2010 – Mexico City, Mexico

Click here and here for additional locations I may have missed.

It’s interesting that the list above includes countries like Eritrea (3rd world), and China, which is the 2nd strongest GDP and has a population which accounts for 19.5% of the word’s entire population.

Something tells me that if this smorgasbord of a list can do it, so can the rest of the world.

Filed under: Business, Green, World, 3rd world countries, Brownsville, China, eco-friendly, Environment, EU, Italy bag ban, Kaua'i, Maui, plastic bag ban, recycle