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New Zealand announced today that it will ban disposable plastic shopping bags by next July, the Associated Press reported.
According to Jacinda Ardern, the country’s prime minister, local residents use hundreds of millions of plastic bags every year, which end up polluting coastal and marine waterways and damage all species of marine life.
Ardern said that she had underestimated the impact of plastics on the environment and people’s feelings about it.
“I can hand-on-heart tell you that the biggest issue I get letters on, from the public, are about plastics, and it comes from children,” she told reporters. “I literally get hundreds and hundreds, and that really stood out to me from the time I took on this job.”
New Zealand’s two main supermarket chains had already announced their own plans to phase out plastic shopping bags by the end of this year.
A number of countries and states have already introduced bans or restrictions on single-use plastic bags, including France, Belgium, China, Hawaii and California.
About 65 thousand people have supported the ban in New Zealand.
