In an effort to combat excessive use of disposable plastic bags, Hong Kong supermarkets charge 50 cents for each plastic bag used, supposedly to promote 'Bring-Your-Own-Bags' and discourage usage on plastic bags with the ultimate objective to reduce the volume of landfills. In response to this, organisations dish out sturdy, re-usable plastic bags, most often for free and imprinted with adverts and slogans. People are supposed to bring them out at shopping and to reuse them.Alas, in the highly sophisticated commercial, impulse-driven market such as Hong Kong, this hope is probably too optimistic.
Today it was reported that overall raw material used for plastic bags increased by 20-30% due to the fact that more re-usable bags (which use 20-30 times more plastic than disposable ones) were produced. Since a lot of them are free, people often have more than 30 such bags at home; and what would people do if there're just too many of them? Yes, to the landfill again, all those extra plastic.
An interesting lesson to see how a good incentive can come back to haunt us all.
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