Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, bans the use and circulation of single-use plastic products in its markets starting Jan. 1, 2021. The photo shows plastic bags used in a street market in Mexico City on Jan. 15, 2020.
After more than a year of preparation, Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, began to implement the “plastic restriction” from January 1, 2021, banned the use and distribution of single-use plastic products in the market, including plates, straws, etc..
On Jan. 1, Mexico City’s environment minister tweeted, “As of today, Mexico City will no longer use single-use plastic products.” The message urged people to remember to carry reusable containers as often as they go out and never forget their cell phones.
The ban also includes single-use plastic cups, plastic stirrers, disposable coffee capsules and balloons.
Mexico City lawmakers voted in 2019 to pass this proposal to restrict the use of plastic bags, cutlery and other single-use plastic products, according to the Associated Press.
Mexico City’s Environmental Protection Agency said the city generated about 13,000 tons of trash per day in 2019.
The ban on plastic bags went into effect last Jan. 1. Mexico City’s 9 million people spent the entire last year adjusting to this new law or in some cases ignoring the new legal changes.
Street vendors sell avocados in plastic bags at the Juarez market in Mexico City on Jan. 15, 2020. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images)
Offering lightweight, supposedly biodegradable plastic bags is becoming more common at the city’s street food stalls, and vendors rarely offer plastic straws. Fresh tortillas are wrapped in paper or placed directly into a cloth that consumers bring with them.
The newspaper noted that if this new law is not accompanied by fines, the ensuing changes could be slow.
That morning, on the corner of a busy avenue in Mexico City, a woman selling tamales (tamales) under a large umbrella propped up, she put two of them in a plastic bag and then took two small colored plastic spoons out of a cup. That cup held a cup full of such plastic spoons.
When asked if she knew the ban was in effect, she said she did, “but because of the CCP virus (Wuhan pneumonia), they (authorities) all forgot about it.”
The woman, who declined to give her name because she did not want to face law enforcement, said it was not just her who did so. Vendors and market stalls throughout the city still use plastic, she said.
How, she asked rhetorically, should she serve steaming hot tamales to customers without plastic bags?
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