France bans plastic bags in anti-pollution drive

Single-use plastic bags are banned in France's shops as from Friday, one of a number of anti-pollution and other measures coming into operation on 1 July. Other measures include a partial ban on driving old cars in Paris and free access to consultations and tests for contraception for 15-18-year-olds.

Plastic bags in a Paris supermarket AFP

All traders - supermarkets, chemists, bakeries and market traders - in France are now forbidden to give customers their purchases in plastic bags, although the ban does not extend to large carrier bags that can be used several times, in a measure that MPs have approved for implementation two years ago.

The measure has been a long time coming.

First proposed in 2004, it was approved by MPs two years ago and was supposed to come into force at the beginning of the year. But it was postponed until 1 July.

Plastic a major polluter

Plastic, which takes a long time to decompose, makes up about 10 percent of the world's discarded waste and there were an estimated 165 million tonnes of plastic pollution in the world's oceans in 2012.

Plastic bags can strangle marine life forms, and are often eaten by whales, dolphins and birds - 94 percent of birds in the North Sea are estimated to have plastic in their stomachs.

Supposedly biodegradable bags only slightly reduce the problem, since they break up into millions of particles and form a kind of broth, which is consumed by birds, fish and shellfish.

Worldwide production of plastic rose from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to 245 million in 2008, 69 million of them in Europe.

In 2010 98.6 billion plastic bags were sold in the European Union, meaning that each EU citizen uses 198 every year, according to the European Commission.

In France 17 billion plastic bags are sold every year.

A voluntary agreement with business reduced the number of bags used in supermarkets from 10.5 billion in 2002 to 700 million in 2011 and a tax of 10 centimes per bag was introduced on non-biodegradable bags in 2014.

Restrictions on ageing cars

The ban is part of a long-running environmental clean-up campaign in the country that hosted last year's Cop21 climate change conference.

Paris has banned the use of cars with licence plates dating from before 1 January 1997 and motorbikes from before 1 January 1999 between 8.00am and 8.00pm.

There are an estimated 700,000 vehicles over 19-years-old in France, 74,900 of them in Paris although only 7.0 percent of voyages within the city are made by car.

The city has also extended grants of up to 400 euros, to encourage cycling or the purchase of local transport cards, for people who scrap petrol-fuelled vehicles registered before 2006 and not 1997 as was previously the case.

Forty-four percent of Paris's fine particle air pollution is caused by traffic, according to air quality monitors Airparif.

On a national level motorists will be able to apply for air-quality certificates that will state whether they can drive in areas restricted to low-polluting vehicles.

Grenoble, Strasbourg and Bordeaux are considering the introduction of such areas.

Air pollution kills 48,000 people a year in France, a recent survey found.

Contraception, paper sorting, online services ...

Other measures coming into operation on 1 July are:

• Contraception was already free to 15-18-year-olds, now the whole procedure, including consultations and tests, is free at the point of delivery;

• Paper waste sorting is compulsory for national and local government offices with more than 20 staff and companies with more than 100 employees;

• Online marketplaces, like AirBnB and Drivy, have to send users an annual declaration of their revenue or face a fine of 10,000 euros;

• Online price comparison sites must explain at the top of the page any criteria apart from price that they use and state if their research is exhaustive or not;

• Sunday opening is allowed for shops in newly created international tourist zones - only one shop, BHV-Marais, has so far declared its intention to avail itself of the opportunity;

• Physically stressful jobs, will entitle employees to open accounts that will give them the right to early retirement, training or part-time work with no loss of salary, a measure that employers' groups have slammed as "inapplicable".