Plastic bags are pretty deplorable by any environmental measure. I have to hold my tongue every time I go to the grocery store because in my native South Carolina, the bags are still handed out a few at a time.

In terms of consumption and pollution, they’re the symbol of what we’re doing wrong–made from oil, clogging up waterways and oceans, and choking turtles, birds and all sorts of sea creatures along the way. Yet, the U.S. has been slow to act. Maybe now we can take some cues from the European Union.

The EU is aiming to reduce use of plastic bags by 80 percent in the next decade. EU governments have unanimously approved the plan though bag use varies widely across the continent. In Denmark, for example, people use an average of four plastic bags per year but in Portugal they use about 100 times more. The plan was downgraded from an outright ban to appease the U.K.

According to The Guardian:

Under the new proposal, EU states can opt for mandatory pricing of bags by 2019, or binding targets to reduce the number of plastic bags used annually per person from 191 now to 90 by 2019 and 40 in 2025. Measures such as bag taxes could also be considered as equivalent.

“The significance of this package is enormous,” the Dutch Liberal MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy told the Guardian. “It is a huge victory for not only the European environment but also globally as most of these single-use bags end up in the world’s oceans and are one of the big causes of the ‘plastic soup’ phenomenon.”

Now how can we get a plastic bag reduction plan like this in place on the other side of the Atlantic?

Related on EcoSalon

DIY: Ten Things to Make From Plastic Bags 

Banning Plastic Bags: It Works

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Nothing Short of a Plastic Paradise

Image : Michael Coghlan

The post Plastic Bags Be Gone: EU Passes Historic Reduction Plan appeared first on EcoSalon.

San Francisco may be the least wasteful U.S. city, but like most other places in the U.S. it has problems with plastic bag pollution. Over one million plastic bags end up in the San Francisco Bay every year, threatening the health of the bay and the ocean.

Save the Bay, a regional organization that has worked to protect, restore, and celebrate San Francisco Bay for more than 50 years, says enough is enough. Wanting to highlight and resolve the growing plastic bag pollution problem in the bay, it has created The Bay vs. The Bag campaign.

The campaign kicked off last week with the release of this animated movie that envisions a world in which San Francisco Bay is no longer made of water but solely of plastic bags.

The The Bay vs. The Bag campaign is aimed at encouraging local governments to ban disposable bags (plastic and paper), or at least to charge a fee for their use. Charging a fee for plastic bags is a tactic that has been shown to effectively reduce plastic bag litter.

This latest campaign encourages locals to kick the bag habit, petition the governor and local council, and become a Save the Bay volunteer.

Image: David Paul Ohmer

The post Bay vs. Bag appeared first on EcoSalon.