Hong Kong - Shoppers in Hong Kong were Monday preparing for a plastic bags decoration tax aimed at cutting the city's daily mountain of waste. A tax of 50 Hong Kong cents (6 US cents) will be levied from Tuesday in a total of around 2,000 shops, including every major supermarket. Littering is a major problem in the former British colony, a densely populated city of 7 million which has one of the world's largest per capita carbon footprints. Around 30 million plastic custom printed bag a day are thrown away in Hong Kong - more than four per person - accounting for some 6 per cent of the 17,500 tons of rubbish sent to the city's landfill sites every day.
Previous voluntary attempts to introduce charges on plastic custom plastic bag in supermarkets have flopped, with one chain dropping a pilot scheme because of fierce opposition from customers. However, the city's environment secretary Edward Yau said he believed people in Hong Kong now understood the need for the charge and were ready for it. 'More and more people already bring their own shopping bag printing and use fewer plastic shopping custom bag as they know more about the importance of the environment to the future of Hong Kong,' Yau said.
A spokesman for the world’s largest retailer says his company has no objections to a ban on single-use plastic custom printed shopping bag in the beach areas of three counties and expects to comply fully with the measure now that it’s become law. “This (change) is right in line with our values,” Neeley said. “Wal-Mart has been a leader around the country in gradually removing plastic custom printed bags from our stores, and easing people in to reusable custom bags. We’re a corporate leader in the green movement.”
Under the law, retailers like Wal-Mart may only use paper custom paper bags made from 100-percent recyclable materials, or they can provide customers with reusable tote custom plastic bag. For patrons who bring in their own reusable plastic custom plastic bag, the legislation requires the retailer to offer them either a cash refund, a store coupon or credit for use in the store, or provide them with some type of retailer reward program.
The amount of the refund, coupon or reward is supposed to be equal or greater than the retailer’s cost of providing paper custom printed plastic bags to the customer, multiplied by the number of reusable bags the customer used at checkout. Affected stores in the three counties are also required to post the following sign to alert customers: “(The county) discourages the use of single-use plastic and paper bags to protect our environment from excess litter and greenhouse gases. We would appreciate our customers using reusable custom promotional bags, but if you are not able to, a 100-percent recycled paper custom plastic bag will be furnished for your use.”
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