After many years of debate, Hong Kong has finally decided to impose a 50 cents (USD 0.06) tax on the use of disposable plastic bag in supermarkets. There have been many efforts to convince people to reduce plastic bag use voluntarily. But mostly the shops hand out bags freely and the result is very limited.

I was shopping in a Causeway Bay supermarket in the basement of a Japanese department store. To see how effective this law is, I've spent a few minutes to observe the shoppers coming out from the cash register. The ratio of people using their own reusable bag vs. disposable plastic bag is roughly half and half. I was hoping even more people would bring their own bag. But compare to the baseline figure a few years ago where reusable bag usage is almost 0, this is certainly a big improvement.

See also my eariler entry about proposed plastic bag ban in California.

2010.06.28 [environment] - comments