Chinese Grocery Bags

I always hear around me that China is bad. It seems there is always someone saying something bad about the policies that China employs. People look at China and only look at the bad policies and don't look at China when it actually does something beneficial and better than most of the world. People see the way China handles child labour, they way they handle global economy, the way it handles security, and the internet, and all of that stuff, but people turn a blind eye to the good things China does.

This was prompted by an article I read a couple of days ago from Reuters about something that I feel China is doing good on. In essence, the article is saying that China is trying to stop the selling of plastic bags. The article can be found [here]. Apparently, in order to help protect the environment China is trying to stop people from buying plastic bags. They started a law that basically makes it illegal to produce thin plastic bags, which is what is most commonly used in China, and that if a store does use plastic bags they must charge for it. They are hoping this will cause people to start using reusable bags and to maybe switch to paper bags.

I find this amazing. This is one of the first countries that I have heard to do this at this scale. I have heard of hundreds of cities that employ this, but not a country. I think it's funny how America points their fingers at China and says that they won't decrease their Carbon Emissions until China does. America is basically saying they aren't going to be environmentally friendly until China does. Well guess what America, China has started. When is America going to follow suit and actually take global warming seriously and start to issue laws in order to help protect the environment? When is America going to realise that the future of the world is green and not massive oil consumption? When is America going to change? Hopefully, in 2009.

Hopefully,
-Aram the Garmo