Last time we knew about prohibition of single-use plastics in India and Costa Rica. In this article, let’s explore the plastic ban in New Zealand and Swiss!

New Zealand

Each year, an estimation show that people in New Zealand used 750 million plastic bags. Thus, each New Zealand uses 150 plastic bags per year. Unfortunately, most of these single-use plastics accidentally enter the natural environment.  It causes serious harm to wildlife, and even adversely affect our own living environment. A typical example is Sea turtles in New Zealand. Sea turtles have favorite food is jellyfish. When plastic bags were dumped into the sea, they ate these bags. Eating the plastic bags because of misunderstanding will cause a painful and slow death for this creature. So, all happens because of the convenience for human life.

In 2018, there were continuous campaigns, promoting the ban on disposable plastic. Cities and some companies have turned to banning plastic straws. In addition, non-plastic stores in turn are opened. On August 10, New Zealand enjoyed the campaign by saying ‘NO’ to disposable plastic. During a press conference, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on single-use plastic bags will take effect in 2019. Retail businesses across New Zealand have 6 months to remove plastic bags. Failure to comply may result in a fine of up to $ 100,000. Hence, this strong economic strike will be able to provide greater incentives for businesses to change.

Swiss

Swiss is one of the most developed country in Europe. In fact, this country consumes three times as much plastic products as other European countries actually. There are over 75 percentage of amount of plastic products is single-use plastic in Swiss. However, recycling plastic is less more than 30 percentage. Thus, people are struggle if they should recycle or burn plastic garbage.

Because from 2000, Swiss stopped burying trash in soil. Even when EU announced to join programs reducing and banning plastics, Swiss still do not want to eliminate since they are not in EU. However, with the high density of waste littering and the fact that Chinese stop importing plastic waste from 2018, Switzerland had to change its policy.

The first step is the policy of the city of Geneva. By 2020, it will ban the sale of plastic at events a public places. This new law will also apply for kiosks and vending vans with single-use plastics such as cups, spoons, containers and so on. Accordingly, business stores which fight against this regulation could lose their permission to do business here.

(Updated)

Source: earrthday.org