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Rwanda also has this policy, since 2008, and they enforce it. The country is very clean, it looks different than other African countries (and countries like the

• greglindahl 10y ago
  Parts of the US have this policy (plastic bags), too. I thought I'd dislike it, but then I realized how amazing it was that most plastic rubbish disappeared.
  • droopyEyelids 10y ago
    Mylar chip bags and 20oz soda bottles... What a revolution for litter and health it'd be if we got rid of those, too.
    • tallanvor 10y ago
      Plastic bottles and cans really need to have a nationwide deposit system in the US - the way Norway does it helps a lot - they have either a 1 or 2.5kr deposit depending on the size of the bottle, and all the grocery stores have a machine that you feed them into that checks for the label and gives you a slip to get the money from the cashier. It'd be nice if we could find a way to extend that type of system to other types of waste, but that gets more difficult.
      • Xylakant 10y ago
        deposit systems have a limited lifetime, the get killed by inflation. For example, glass beer bottles in GER have a deposit of 8 cent. This used to be 15 Pfennig, a pretty high amount when the deposit was introduced. But since you can't raise the deposit (bottles suddenly would raise in value) and inflation pushes down the purchasing power, even bottle collectors tend to leave glass bottles behind.
        • megablast 10y ago
          You can raise it. South Australia recently raised it from 5c to 10c.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • kristofferR 10y ago
        Speaking of Norway - we've also dealt nicely with the plastic bag issue by having sturdy grocery bags that we subsequently also use as garbage bags (big black thrash bags aren't commonly used). A few years ago the government suggested taxing plastic bags to gain revenue, but it was discarded since the environmental organizations concluded it would be bad for the environment (as more people would throw garbage directly into thrash cans/buy thrash bags).
        • GrinningFool 10y ago
          Conversely my regional grocery store chain has recently switched to even thinner plastic bags. Used to be you could at least use them for trash, but now they're pretty much useless.
        • GrinningFool 10y ago
          Conversely my regional grocery store chain has recently switched to even thinner plastic bags. Used to be you could at least use them for trash, but now they're pretty much useless.
      • malloci 10y ago
        While I love the idea, I'd much rather see the money required to rollout a national deposit system go to expanding domestic and commercial recycling programs nationally. This includes subsidizing any costs with providing recycling bins as well as building and maintaining sorting centers.
      • joecool1029 10y ago
        > Plastic bottles and cans really need to have a nationwide deposit system in the US No, they really don't. Having spent enough time in states that do and states that don't, I can tell you that having a deposit system encourages some bad behavior and doesn't really solve the problem. 1. It encourages scavenger people that dig through recycling and garbage making a mess of things in order to find large bottles with a deposit. On face value you think, 'yay, we get free sanitation workers cleaning up the city'. The reality is, they find the most efficient way to dig through and don't care about throwing disposable trash all over to get the loot. 2. Hoarding. I've seen people's kitchens and basements filled with cans because they want to do it all in one shot or for some special occasion. It makes a mess and is super annoying. You like fruit flies? This is how you get fruit flies. 3. It's inefficient. People who have the means will still not care about collecting the deposit because it's a PITA to go down to the store with the empties. The only people who get excited about it are the same people who think a tax refund is actually a gift from the government.. While it might solve some of the above problems, you won't find much luck making deposits $1/bottle or something in the US because it's only going to make life more of a pain for the poor. It's not a workable solution.
        • legulere 10y ago
          Living in a country with a bottle deposit (Germany), I have never encountered any of the points you brought up.
• WalterBright 10y ago
  My father told me that American highways used to be lined with trash until it was made illegal to throw trash out the window.
  • DrScump 10y ago
    In Silicon Valley, there is far more trash along highways than there was 30 years ago, well beyond simple per-capita pace.
    • xapata 10y ago
      Perhaps a new marketing campaign would be useful.
      • aanm1988 10y ago
        How about something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlFD0Zyl_f0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlFD0Zyl_f0
        • DrScump 10y ago
          This is the classic of the genre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGu4AwL5Kho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGu4AwL5Kho
    • jws 10y ago
      I've driven through quite a bit of the United States. Attitudes to roadside littering vary wildly. Some eastern Washington state highways and rural Kentucky highways have mind bogglingly improbable amounts of litter for the number of people which travel them. Time to roll out the "Crying Indian Ad" for another generation.
      • tracker1 10y ago
        Littering just pisses me off... I think that and vandalizing publicly accessible restrooms are the two things most likely to inspire a violent response in my mind. It's a complete lack of morality and respect for other's property, and community in general.
• vidoc 10y ago
  In the specific case of Rwanda, it's also important to realize that the plastic ban, as well as the universally celebrated higher participation of women in administration and politics are also fantastic PR of the regime essentially aimed at the West.
  • anigbrowl 10y ago
    Dictatorial regimes that implement actually beneficial policies I can tolerate. Less good than a democracy in terms of social and political freedom, but better than dictatorships that don't implement any benign policies. That said my knowledge of African politics is limited to a few news articles a week so I can't form a meaningful opinion about how well or badly countries there are run except in really obvious cases like Zimbabwe.
    • vidoc 10y ago
      > Dictatorial regimes that implement actually beneficial policies I can tolerate. Less good than a democracy in terms of social and political freedom, but better than dictatorships that don't implement any benign policies. The policies are not really the problem actually, especially when they are, as you say, beneficial. In a perfect world where media coverage respects basic ethical rules of journalism, there shouldn't be any issue really. Unfortunately, in the case of Rwanda, I tend to see the magnifying glass systematically being put on 'favorable' PR-stuff like that, vs constitutional reform, mysterious disappearances of political dissidents of the regime (sometimes abroad), open support to militias in Congo. e.g: I wonder what someone on the receiving end of bullets in the Kivu region would think of the hagiographic article of the guardian. Ultimately, the survival of most of this kind of regime depends heavily on the way they are perceived globally, undoubtedly, the Rwandan regime beautifully manufactures its image.
• aaron695 10y ago
  A bit OT, but interesting - Smugglers work on the dark side of Rwanda’s plastic bag ban http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/25/rwanda-plastic-bag-ban.html http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/25/rwanda-plast...