Can Northern governments follow Africa's lead on Plastic?

Recently, Ruchira has had a number of excellent blogs about reducing plastic. Not using plastic bags was one of her number one suggestions. Thinking of the absurdly enormous pile of plastic bags that are taking up space in my kitchen (since I don't know what will happen to them if I throw them 'away', I horde them until I can find some place to 'recycle' them - not immediately evident where I live), I have to agree. And I've wondered, what are other countries doing about plastic bags?

For those of you who've lived and traveled in the developing world, you are undoubtably familiar with large numbers of plastic bags that litter the cities, towns and natural parks. One of my big 'uh-oh' moments around plastic was when I was in Baja, California, in the middle of the desert with no habitation for miles - and there were plastic bags hanging on lone cactus plants, as if someone had a bad idea about how to decorate the majestic cacti.

Besides being aesthetically unpleasing, they are bad for the environment (plastics in ocean) and for human health and well being - they tend to clog up drain pipes. Several years ago, South Africa, after years of them being dubbed the country's 'national flower', banned them. Not long after, Rwanda and Uganda have followed suite. Kenya and other East African countries have tried taxing industry that produces them or consumers that buy them (In Ireland, they are no longer free)- neither of which have been popular measures. And it's not just Africa. The dangerous bags are no longer free in Ireland. China banned them in 2008.

African industry used the same line of argument that its US counterparts did when this issue was raised in California: they insist that it is consumer behaviors, not production trends, that has led to this problem - consumers need more 'education' on how to properly dispose of plastic bags. Apparently African consumers need to become more ethical.

Even though consumer education (and simple measures like enough rubbish bins in public areas, dumps and, while you are at it, good sanitation infrastructure), would help, plastic bags are not so easily tied down. Like other industrial pollutants, they are disrespectful of national borders, and travel, carried by humans or the wind, into countries that outlaw them and wildlife areas that never asked for them. It would take a global ban to stop it. There is a movement to create such a ban, but, clearly, it hasn't succeeded yet.

Followers of this blog know that I am not anti-industry. I'm just pro-living. Plastic bags are pollutants, and should be treated as such. Let's stop producing them all together. In the meantime, I'll follow Ruchira's suggestion and stop acquiring new ones.