$1 fee eyed to discourage use of single-use plastic bags in CNMI

It takes a thousand years for a single plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Yet most people don’t just use one plastic bag a day. A trillion plastic bags are estimated to be used worldwide every year. That is over a million bags per minute.

And most of these end up as trash, not only on land but in the ocean. The United Nations Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that about 46,000 of plastic are found floating in every square mile of ocean. That was 15 years ago. The trend has only worsened.

Worse, these bags do not really fully break down but photodegrades to become microplastics—plastic pieces smaller than 2.5cm that are washed up on shores, or are accidentally ingested by fish, which we then eat. Think about it.

To discourage the use of plastic bags in the CNMI, a $1 plastic bag fee is again being proposed at the Legislature through House Bill 22-56 (Eco-Friendly Act of 2021), which Rep. Sheila Babauta has introduced. This is an attempt to resuscitate the “Going Green Act” bill filed in 2015 by then representative and now Sen. Vinnie Sablan.

Read more: https://www.saipantribune.com/index.php/1-fee-eyed-to-discourage-use-of-single-use-plastic-bags/