The executives of companies that keep or make illegal plastic bags can be imprisoned for up to a year, officials say. Plastic bags, which take hundreds of years to degrade, are a major global issue, blamed for clogging oceans and killing marine life. And somewhere among them, often tucked in the women’s undergarments, Mr. Mberabagabo said, were hundreds of plastic bags. Nearby, a tall plastic bin was filled to the brim with plastic bags, from the large supermarket kind to the small, translucent types used to pack sandwiches. In informal settlements in places like Kenya, plastic bags are sometimes used as “flying toilets” containing human waste.

Source: New York Times October 28, 2017 09:00 UTC