A draft bill came up in the Bundestag this morning....from the SPD chief running the German Ministry of the Environment.
The bill (if passed) would ban plastic bags at stores (to include bio-based and biodegradable bags) in 2020.
The fine if caught selling or distributing the plastic bags? 100,000 Euro.
The chatter is that it'd occur early in 2020, and have a six-month period where the stocks of plastic bags would be put out.....then there would be no more.
The logistical pains here? I would suggest that about a quarter of the German population (particularly those over the age of fifty) carry around cloth bags now. You can stop any 55-year-old German gal and ask.....then she'll whip out a minimum of one cloth bag.....maybe even four of them.
But this begs questions on meat purchases, and how that plastic bag will be avoided. Fresh fruit and vegetables? That will trigger some questions as well.
Will it pass that easily through the Bundestag? I think the Greens, the SPD, and Linke Party will fall all over themselves in passing this. There's little that the CDU can do to point out issues with the idea.
As for Germans going out on their own, and buying their own bags? Several years ago, I worked with an American who had Turkish commercial connections. One day, we were chatting about plastic bags with logos. His Turkish associate could readily prep up an entire pallet of plastic bag containers with a logo on each bag in a matter of an hour or two. So it wouldn't surprise me if Germans skip around this ban problem by just buying their own bags from beyond the German border.
At least on the positive side....there will be no more German guilt over plastic bags. That's one less stressful thing to worry about.
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