紐時賞析／10年前開始禁用一次性塑膠袋 加州人去年塑膠袋丟棄量反增

将近十年前，加州成为美国第一个禁止一次性塑胶袋的州，以努力解决棘手的塑胶废弃物问题。示意图。图片来源／Ingimage

California Tried to Ban Plastic Grocery Bags. It Didn’t Work.

加州试图禁止用塑胶袋购物 失败收场

Almost a decade ago, California became the first state in the United States to ban single-use plastic bags in an effort to tackle an intractable plastic waste problem.

将近十年前，加州成为美国第一个禁止一次性塑胶袋的州，以努力解决棘手的塑胶废弃物问题。

Then came the reusable, heavy-duty plastic bags, offered to shoppers for 10 cents. Designed to withstand dozens of uses, and technically recyclable, many retailers treated them as exempt from the ban.

接着出现可重复使用的耐用塑胶袋，以10美分提供给消费者。这种塑胶袋设计成经得起数十次使用，而且技术上可回收利用，许多零售商把它们当成豁免于禁令之外。

But because they didn’t look much different from the flimsy bags they replaced, lots of people didn’t actually reuse them. And though they came emblazoned with a recycling symbol, it turned out that few, if any, actually were recycled.

但因为这种袋子看上去跟它们取代的轻薄袋子没有太大区别，很多人其实并未重复利用。尽管袋子上印有回收标志，但结果却显示，如果有的话，实际上很少被回收。

The unhappy result: Last year, Californians threw away more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed, according to figures from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

这导致了一个不愉快的结果：根据加州回收机构CalRecycle的数据，比起法律首度通过的时候，按照重量计算，加州人去年丢掉更多塑胶袋。

Now, lawmakers are trying to fix that. A new bill seeks to ban all plastic bags offered at the checkout line, including the heavy duty kind. (Shoppers would still be able to pay for a paper bag.)

现在，立法者正在设法收拾这个问题。一项新法案试图禁止在收银台提供一切塑胶袋，包括耐用类。（消费者仍将能够付钱买纸袋）。

“It’s time for us to get rid of plastic bags all together,” said state Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat and a sponsor of the bill.

民主党籍法案提案人、州参议员艾伦说，「现在我们该完全摆脱塑胶袋了」。

By some accounts, California’s initial plastic bag ban was a well-meaning but failed experiment, an environmental rule that backfired and inadvertently made the matter worse. “We didn’t worry about the carve-out for these thicker bags in the early days,” said Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, an advocacy group. “It just didn’t seem like they were going to be the thing that they ultimately became.”

根据一些说法，加州最初的塑胶袋禁令是个出于善意但失败的实验，一个适得其反的环保规定，而且不经意把情况变得更糟。倡议团体「加州人反对浪费」主任穆雷说，「一开始我们并不担心推出这种较厚的袋子，只是它们似乎没有成为最终想要变成的样子」。

Some advocates say the initial ban would have been effective if properly enforced. The ban, adopted in 2014, allowed for plastic bags to be sold to shoppers only if they were widely recycled in California.

一些倡议人士说，如果妥善执行，最初的禁令本来会起作用。该禁令于2014年正式通过，只要是在加州广泛回收，就允许出售塑胶袋给消费者。

Daniel Conway of the California Grocers Association said retailers had “followed the letter of the law.” He said he hoped new legislation would clear up any confusion that remained over the thicker bags.

加州杂货商协会的康威表示，零售商已「遵循法律条文」。他说，他希望新的立法能厘清与较厚袋子有关的任何尚存混乱。

“We see this as finishing what we started,” he said. “People are really starting to accept that they bring reusable bags with them when they go to the grocery store.”

他说，「我们认为，这是完成我们开始的工作。人们真的已开始接受，前往杂货店时随身带着可重复使用的袋子」。

文／Hiroko Tabuchi 译／周辰阳