UN Environment Chief Urges Ban On Plastic Bags

Single-use plastic bags should be banned because of their degrading effects on the planet says the United Nation's top environmental official.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), whose office advises U.N. member states, said, "Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere." He was quoted Monday by McClatchy Newspapers.

Although recycling bags is on the rise in the United States, an estimated 90 billion thin bags a year, most used to handle produce and groceries, still go un-recycled. In fact, they were the second most common form of litter after cigarette butts at the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a marine environmental group.

The UN's anti-plastic declaration comes amid a UNEP report that labels plastic as the most common form of ocean litter, which poses hazards "because it persists so long, degrading into tinier and tinier bits that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web."

In the United States, only San Francisco has completely banned plastic bags, while Los Angeles is slated to do so in 2010. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C.'s city council is set to vote on a five-cent-a-bag tax later this month. Similar proposals have failed in New York and Philadelphia.

Leading plastic bag manufacturers dispute the claim that a ban on plastic would be good for the environmental and say the real goal is for companies to increase the recycled content of plastic bags to 40 percent by 2015, reducing waste by 300 million pounds a year.

"Recycling is what we see as the best approach for the U.S.," Keith Christman of the American Chemistry Council said. "Plastic is just too valuable to waste."