Acting under a 2015 European Union directive addressing the global disaster caused by plastic bags, which take hundreds of years to degrade, Italian lawmakers enacted a measure banning the use of plastic bags for fruit, vegetables and baked goods in favor of eco-friendly biodegradable and compostable alternatives.
The government was firm on one point: The new bags could not be given out for free, and the charge of 1 euro cent to 3 euro cents per eco-friendly bag had to appear on the sales bill. Failure to charge consumers would result in a fine for the retailer. [...]
Seeking to appease outraged consumers, the Health Ministry conceded on Thursday that consumers could bring their own biodegradable and compostable bags from home, as long as they had never been previously used. [...]
“The crazy thing is that the Italian law is very advanced — more advanced than the E.U. directive. But the government handled it all badly,” Mr. Ciafani said. “They allowed a cutting-edge law to become the object of political conflict, but, then, we are in a period of electoral campaign.”
Mr. Ciafani said that if the aim of the European directive was to reduce the number of plastic bags, the Italian law missed what could have been an opportunity to, for example, adopt the mesh bags used in many northern European countries to bag fruits and vegetables.
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