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Plastics Industry Loses Legal Bid Against Chile's Landmark Bag Ban
Chile's Constitutional Court ratified a bill that bans plastic bags across the country after rejecting an appeal from the plastics industry.
Last month, Chile's Congress unanimously approved the ban in order to protect the environment and especially the ocean. Shortly after, the Santiago-based Association of Industrial Plastics (Asipla) launched a legal challenge to overturn the legislation, saying it was unconstitutional.
On Tuesday, the court determined the legislation was in line with the constitution, thereby paving the way for Chile to become the first country in the Americas to prohibit retailers from handing out plastics bags.
"We are very pleased with the court's decision, it was the last stage for the enactment of this law," said environment minister Marcela Cubillos, according to AFP.
In a tweet, the Ministry of Environment noted that the court's green light on the bag ban coincided with International Plastic Bag Free Day, which is observed on July 3.
Once the bill is enacted by President Sebastian PiƱera's government, businesses will have will have six months to adjust to the new rule. Smaller businesses will have a year to comply, AFP reported.
Chile's move is not as extreme as it sounds. The vast majority (about 95 percent) of surveyed Chileans across all age groups approved of the plastic bag ban, according to the Ministry of Environment's website. There are also 92 cities and towns that already have measures regulating the usage of plastic bags.
Chile uses more than 3.4 billon plastic bags annually, or roughly 200 bags per person per year, according to Asipla.
However, about 97 percent of those plastic bags end up in landfills or in oceans, where they take centuries to degrade.
This is a landmark piece of legislation for both South and North America. The Santiago Times noted that a number of states and municipalities in the U.S. and Canada have similar bans but none on the national level yet. But Costa Rica announced in August that it wants to be the first country in the world to ban all single-use plastics by 2021.
Elsewhere around the globe, Rwanda and Kenya have enforced complete bans on plastic bags. In 2002, Bangladesh became the world's first country to ban the items.
Meanwhile in Texas, the state's top court ruled last month that cities cannot ban plastic bags.
The Russian military is taking measures to protect the residents of a remote Arctic settlement from a mass of polar bears, German press agency DPA reported.
The move comes after regional authorities declared a state of emergency over the weekend after sightings of more than 50 bears in the town of Belushya Guba since December.
This year's letter from Bill and Melinda Gates focused on nine things that surprised them. For the Microsoft-cofounder, one thing he was surprised to learn was the massive amount of new buildings the planet should expect in the coming decades due to urban population growth.
"The number of buildings in the world is going to double by 2060. It's like we're going to build a new New York City every month for the next 40 years," he said.
Over the past few years, it seems vegan cooking has gone from 'brown rice and tofu' to a true art form. These amazing cooks show off the creations on Instagramāand we can't get enough.
By Shana Udvardy
After a dearth of action on climate change and a record year of extreme events in 2017, the inclusion of climate change policies within the annual legislation Congress considers to outline its defense spending priorities (the National Defense Authorization Act) for fiscal year 2018 was welcome progress. House and Senate leaders pushed to include language that mandated that the Department of Defense (DoD) incorporate climate change in their facility planning (see more on what this section of the bill does here and here) as well as issue a report on the impacts of climate change on military installations. Unfortunately, what DoD produced fell far short of what was mandated.
Trump is losing his rallying cry to save coal. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted on Thursday to retire two coal-fired power plants in the next few years despite a plea from the president to keep one of the plants open.
Earlier this week, the president posted an oddly specific tweet that urged the government-owned utility to save the 49-year-old Paradise 3 plant in Kentucky. It so happens that the facility burns coal supplied by Murray Energy Corporation, whose CEO is Robert Murray, is a major Trump donor.