Over 600 Stores in Nagoya City to Charge for Plastic Shopping Bags

Image by Willem van Bergen. Some Rights Reserved.

The Nagoya City government in Aichi prefecture will start a scheme to charge shoppers for plastic shopping bags throughout the city about two years ahead of schedule, although the city government initially planned to launch the program in 2010. In addition to Midori Ward, an existing model district of this scheme, the 7 wards in the eastern part of the city joined on October 4, 2008, and the project participants now include 635 stores. Furthermore, the 8 wards in the western part of the city will join the scheme in April 2009, thereby covering the entire city.

In Midori Ward, which started a pilot scheme in October 2007, the ratio of plastic shopping bags refused by customers was 89 percent over a one-year period. This is equivalent to about 31.48 million plastic shopping bags. This result has accelerated the implementation of the scheme throughout the city.

Starting from its implementation in the 7 eastern wards, participating stores include various services; 146 supermarket branches, 76 drug stores, 63 pharmacies, 267 dry cleaners, 19 shops in universities, 61 bottle shops, and 3 other stores. The number of stores increased by more than 10-fold over those participating in 2007, when the pilot scheme started in the model district.

In Nagoya City, about one billion plastic shopping bags weighing 7,000 metric tons were used during 2006, and the City is targeting a reduction of about 60 percent, amounting to 600 million bags weighing 4,200 metric tons. It is estimated that a reduction of 600 million plastic shopping bags is equivalent to of 39,000 drums of oil (one oil drum = 200 liters), or 24,000 metric tons of CO2.

- Stores in Nagoya City Start Charging for Plastic Shopping Bags (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/026949.html

Posted: 2009/01/05 06:00:15 AM

TAG Local government , Material reduction , NGO/Citizen , Non-manufacturing industry