Mexico City joined Querétaro and Tijuana on January 1st and banned single-use plastic bags everywhere in the city from large chain stores to corner shops. They have also implemented a fine for any merchants caught using them from 42,000 pesos ($2,233) up to 170,000 pesos (9,039).
Mexico City is estimated to use more than 68,000 tons of plastic bags every year. “We have to take plastic out of circulation,” said Andree Lilian Guigue, the official overseeing the ban in Mexico City. “Plastic and other waste products that damage the planet end up in the ravines, woods and public spaces of the city – and nobody cleans it up.”
Before plastic was invented most people would use natural made products to carry home their goods, and many still use them to this day. Items such as warm tortillas were brought home in cloth or woven baskets. Cone-shaped rolled paper called cucuruchos are being re-implemented for bulk dry goods, and mesh or net bags called “ayate” bags.
Claudia Hernández is the city’s Director of Environmental Awareness, she talked about the newly implemented laws: “We have a very rich history in ways to wrap things. We are finding that people are returning to baskets, to cucuruchos, referring to cone-shaped rolls of paper once used to wrap loose bulk goods like nuts, chips or seeds.”
Of course, not everyone is happy about the ban, like Ernesto Gallardo Chávez “Just imagine, I forget my bag and I buy a lot of stuff. How do I carry it all, if they don’t give you bags anymore?” said Chávez.
Even though Gallardo Chávez thinks protecting the environment is “very good”, he still thinks the plastic bags can be useful for garbage cans or for picking up after dogs on the city streets.
“We use the bags for garbage, to separate it into organic and inorganic, and then take it out to the garbage truck,” he notes.
Critics have also argued that the single-use plastic bags will be replaced with single-use paper bags. However, paper bags are not nearly as bad as plastic and all the people who are upset can just purchase a reusable bag and think about the positive effect that it’s having on the planet, rather than the inconvenience it’s causing them.
Mexico City will be offering reusable shopping bags for purchase at around 75 cents.
Natural Resource Defense Council scientist Jennifer Sass, explains the charge for paper: “That’s why any good plastic bag ban attempts to avoid a surge in paper bag use by also implementing a paper bag fee, ideally nudging shoppers to bring bags from home instead.”
For anyone who thinks heavy duty reusable shopping bags are a good idea, I encourage you to read my article on the UK’s so-called ‘Bags for Life’. People are not going to be happy when they are inconvenienced, but they’ll get over it. Whether people agree with how this was implemented or not, does not matter. I’m pretty sure if the marine life or wildlife could speak any of our human languages, they would have told us this long ago. But, instead, now they’re washing up on shores dead from stomachs full of plastic. In my opinion, Mexico City did exactly what needs to be done, ban single-use plastic!
