New Zealand Bans Single-Use of Plastic Shopping Bags

Plastic pollution has become a thriving global concern, with a million birds and more than 100,000 maritime mammons’s injured and killed every year. Companies that break the rule of using plastic bags in New Zealand will face heavy penalties including fines of up to more than $67,000.
It is said by Environment minister Eugenie sage that, “"New Zealanders are proud of our country's clean, green reputation and want to help ensure we live up to it". "Ending the use of single-use plastic shopping bags helps do that."
Under this new rule, New Zealand government announced that thin plastic single – use of shopping bags can no longer be supplied, but the law of New Zealand allows reusable shippers to sustain being provided.
The codifications which was announced in august last year and came into the existence on Monday – it will have little practical effect, as New Zealand’s major supermarkets have already deliberately banned the bags.
However, sage said it was putting the issue of recycling on the agenda.
"(The ban) doesn't go far enough, but what is really great is it's started the conversation," she told Radio New Zealand.
"People are now talking about single-use plastics and how we can phase them out."
Britain's Royal Statistical Society estimates 90.5 per cent of all plastic waste - about 6,300 million metric tons - has never been recycled and is either in disposal area or stockpile in the natural environment.
If current production and waste management trends continue, the sink of plastic waste is estimated to almost double to 12,000 million metric tons by 2050.
More than 80 countries have already introduced similar bans, according to the UN Environment Programme.
While it praised such initiatives, it said more needed to be done to minimize other sources of plastic waste including micro beads and single-use items such as straws.
By: Tripti Varun
Content: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/environment/pollution/new-zealand-bans-single-use-plastic-bags/articleshow/70020122.cms