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Shops face fines from today for handing out plastic bags
A ban on single-use plastic bags in all shops across the Brussels region fully takes effect on Friday - although fruit and vegetable bags can continue being used until next September.
The plastic bag ban officially came into force on 1 September this year, but shops were given a three-month grace period to use up any existing stocks of plastic bags.
From 1 December, stores that continue to offer single-use plastic bags to customers face administative or even criminal sanctions, starting with on-the-spot fines from €50 and a maximum penalty of €100,000 for repeat offenders.
According to a survey of 1,375 stores by Brussels business body Atrium, more than half of shops had used up their plastic bag stock by October and more than two-thirds had already replaced their bags with another type, mainly paper bags.
The Brussels-Capital region has itself bought 150,000 reusable bags and distributed them to selected small businesses in each of the 19 municipalities.
Belgian consumers use more than 1 billion plastic bags every year, or about 98 bags per person, according to the green progressive party Groen.
The EU has called for member states to reduce their consumption of plastics, which are made from fossil fuels and generally not biodegradable. Every year, 800,000 tonnes of single-use plastic bags end up in landfill sites and incinerators throughout Europe.
Comments
So now we will send about twice that weight of paper bags to incineration or landfill each year and eliminate convenience, betterperformance and possible reuse of those plastic bags.
Well done, paper industry lobbyists!
Silver333 xcouldnt disagree more paper is natural and BIODEGRADES plastic isn't and doesn't. I'm so happy the world has finally woken up we are filling the land and oceans with none degradable crap and it's getting into the food chains
CC_R, I agree we must prevent plastic waste entering our oceans and we must clean up as much as possible what’s already there. But here in Belgium we have systems (among the best in the world) to not only prevent that but also to either recycle or recover the energy in plastic. Sadly, a lot of energy and resources are used to make paper which are not recovered by biodegradation. The plastic bag policy is yet another needless government intervention which will yield no appreciable environmental benefit while further reducing consumer choice and convenience.