Biodegradable plastic bags are between the cross hairs of yet another country in the world. Last week Morocco the second largest user of plastic bags worldwide, behind the United States created a movement against plastic bags being used.
“Morocco without plastic bags” campaign.
A bill on the use of degradable and biodegradable plastic bags was adopted in June 2010 and came into force about a year later, the aim being to reduce the consumption of plastic bags in Morocco, the second biggest user of plastic bags in the world.
When the bill was passed there were many companies that did not know where to purchase biodegradable plastic, many companies started to use oxo-degradable technologies within Morocco and still use these technologies today. 3 billion bags are consumed every year in Morocco and 11.7 KG of plastic bags are consumed per capita in Morocco, the interesting point in this phenomena is the fact that these plastic bags are used on average for 12 minutes, yet they take 100 years to degrade in the natural environment.
The fines for not using biodegradable or degradable technologies for biodegradable plastic in Morocco is between 10,000 and 500,000 DH, this has forced many manufacturers to manufacture biodegradable or degradable bags.
The US uses around 350 billion plastic bags a year which is the highest use per capita in the world, Morocco uses just 3 billion, but per capita has the 2nd highest consumption per capita, France and Algeria are not far behind with 17 billion and 6 billion nationwide.
Countries around the world have continued to ban non-biodegradable bags in the world and most of these countries have imposed heavy fines in the third world including imprisonment if the manufacture of the plastic bags doesn’t follow the guidelines.
BioSphere plastics biodegradable plastic additive has moved product within these regions to help lower the costs to manufacturers of plastic bags, so they can become biodegradable without changes to machines and adds a very small increase to the costs to the consumers.
