Plastic Shopping Bags Ban In France

With each of us in France apparently using 80 plastic shopping bags individually a year and 8 billion in the world in general the French environment minister, Ségolène Royal, has finally stepped in and said 'C'est suffit"!

The ban had already been scheduled for January 1st this year and then put back until April 1st, but it has now been announced that as from July 1st 2016 they will be banned. The date had been pushed back twice to allow the supermarkets more time to adapt and of course source suppliers of re-useable bags or paper ones. The smaller ones we use for our fruit and vegetables will be accepted up until Jan 1st 2017 at which point the supermarkets will have had to replace them with biodegradable ones.

The UK although they have not banned the plastic bags now makes a charge of 5p to help reduce wastage, but in France it will be a ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags and a push for re-useable 'bags for life' type.