One year later, plastic bag use is down--but by no means gone in China

    限塑令在中國頒布一年后，塑料袋的使用減少了--但遠非一去不復返。

    Does Banning Plastic Bags Work?

    Thin plastic bags are the ultimate throwaway item. Used once to tote groceries, the thin white bags often go on to second lives as permanent pollution and an eyesore. So a host of countries, cities and other governments have banned them or forced consumers to pay for them. The largest such country, by far, was China.

    The regulations went into effect last June before the Olympics and the track record is mixed. Bai si wu ran or "white pollution" seems to have visibly declined but that may have more to do with tidying up garbage than any ban.

    Even government officials admit the thinnest plastic bags, which were banned outright, are still in use, particularly in remote areas. Small workshops that churn out the contraband bags are easy to set up and hard to police. Small vendors, for their part, seem to think that the rule is no longer enforced and hand them out even in Beijing.

    Yet, a survey by the International Food Packaging Association found that the number of plastic bags making their way into garbage had declined by 10 percent over the last year and the Chinese government claimed that supermarkets alone reduced such bag use by 66 percent-some 40 billion fewer plastic bags to get caught in trees, riverbanks or elsewhere. The ultimate hope of the Chinese authorities is for the bags that are used to be recycled.

    Plastic bags may not disappear anytime soon but they're getting harder to spot.

    限塑令有效果嗎？

    薄塑料袋最終是被丟棄的東西。這種薄薄的白色袋子僅僅在購買日用雜貨的時候使用一次，而后就成為永久性的污染和礙眼物了。因此很多國家、城市以及政府部門禁止使用塑料袋，或者強迫消費者在使用的時候付錢，中國就是其中最大的限塑令國家。

    限塑令在去年奧運會之前的6月份開始生效，其效果是喜憂參半。"白色污染"似乎明顯減少了，但是這可能更多的歸于對垃圾箱的清理而非限塑令。

    連政府官員也承認，被禁的最薄的塑料袋仍然在使用之中，尤其是在偏遠地區。生產這種違禁塑料袋的小作坊很容易建立起來，對其監控也很難。小商販似乎認為限塑令不再有效了，他們甚至在北京兜售。

    不過，國際食品包裝協會（International Food Packaging Association）的一項調查發現，在過去的一年里，進入垃圾桶的塑料袋的數量下降了10%,中國政府稱僅超市中塑料袋的使用就減少了66%--減少的塑料袋約有400億個，而人們經常會在樹上、河邊或者其它地方發現這些被棄塑料袋。中國當局的最終目標是使用可循環利用的塑料袋。

    塑料袋可能不會在短期內很快消失，但是對它們的使用越來越少了。

    Vocabulary:

    Ban:禁止；禁令

    Ultimate:最終的

    Tote:攜帶，搬運

    Groceries:食品雜貨

    Permanent:最終的

    Eyesore:令人厭惡的東西

    Regulation:規定

    Decline:下降

    Garbage:垃圾

    Outright:徹底地

    Remote:偏遠的

    Churn out: （粗制濫造地）大量生產

    Contraband:違禁品

    Police:（動詞）監控

    Vendor:商販

    Survey:調查

    Billion:十億

    Recycle:循環