2008年6月1日，我国开始实行“限塑令”。如今，限令已满三年，但除了超市和不多的饭店外，“限塑令”并未得到有效执行：超薄塑料袋大行其道，免费塑料袋重出江湖。有人戏称，“限塑令”遭遇三年之痒。

王葆辰 选编

Imagine a world without plastic shopping bags. It could be the future.

There is a growing international movement to ban or discourage[2] the use of plastic bags because of their environmental effects. Countries from Ireland to Australia have been cracking down on the bags and action has begun to stir in the United States.[3]

The ubiquitous plastic shopping bag, so handy for everything from toting groceries to disposing of doggie doo, may be a victim of its own success.[4] Although plastic bags didn’t come into widespread use until the early 1980s, environmental groups estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion[5] of the bags are now used worldwide every year.

Critics of the bags say they use up natural resources, consume energy to manufacture, create litter, choke marine life and add to landfill waste.[6]

“Every time we use a new plastic bag they go and get more petroleum from the Middle East and bring it over in tankers,” said Stephanie Barger, executive director of Earth Resource Foundation in Costa Mesa, Calif.[7] “We are extracting[8] and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes.”

The tax proposals are loosely modeled on Ireland’s “PlasTax,” a levy of about 20 cents that retail customers have had to pay for each plastic bag since March 2002.[9] The use of plastic bags in Ireland dropped more than 90 percent following imposition of the tax, and the government has raised millions of dollars for recycling programs.[10]

Similar legislation was introduced in Scotland and is being discussed for the rest of the United Kingdom.[11]

Consumers seem agreeable[12] to giving up the bags. “There certainly hasn’t been an angry uprising[13] of shoppers (in Ireland) saying we want our bags for free,” said Claire Wilton, senior waste campaigner at Greenpeace-UK. “I think a lot of people recognize they are wasteful. That’s why they try to save them to use again, although they often forget to bring them with them when they shop.”

In Australia, about 90 percent of retailers have signed up with the government’s voluntary program to reduce plastic bag use.

One of the key concerns is litter. In China, plastic bags blowing around the streets are called “white pollution.” In South Africa, the bags are so prominent in the countryside that they have won the derisive title of “national flower.”[14]

One of the most dramatic impacts is on marine life. About 100,000 whales, seals[15], turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide, according to Planet Ark, an international environmental group. The bags were the fifth most common item of debris[16] found on beaches.

But the plastic industry maintains that plastic bags are not the root of all evil. The solution to bag litter is to change people, not the product. The problems with litter, they say, are due to irresponsible people and plastic bags, they’re quick to point out, are better for the environment than paper bags. Is this true?

As it turns out, we’re no better off (and may actually be worse off) using paper bags than plastic ones.[17] Consider these facts from US Environmental Protection Agency:

* Paper bags generate 70 percent more air pollution and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.[18]

* It takes 91 percent less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.

* Paper bags take up more landfill space (2,000 plastic bags weight just 30 pounds, whereas 2,000 paper bags weight 280 pounds).

* Paper bags in landfills don’t break down much faster than plastic bags (because they’re not exposed to water, light, oxygen and other elements that they need to biodegrade).[19]

So we’re not necessarily better switching from plastic bags to paper ones. Paper bags still account for a huge amount of wasted energy and refuse[20] that is unnecessary. “Every piece of litter has a human face behind it. If they are a harm to the environment in terms of visual blight,[21] then people need to stop littering,” said Rob Krebs, a spokesman for the American Plastics Council.

More than waiting for penalties, the challenge is convincing citizens to change their habits. We have to go back to our grandmothers’ habits.

Vocabulary

1. 标题利用了bag一词的多义性，第二处bag是动词，直译为“把……装进袋里”。

2. discourage: 阻止，阻拦。

3. crack down on:（对……）采取严厉措施；stir: 发生，开始活跃。

4. 塑料购物袋无所不在：装食品杂货、清理小狗的粪便，塑料购物袋方便用在许多事儿上，但或许它也正是其自身成功的受害者。

5. trillion:（英、德）百万兆，（美、法）万亿，兆，本文取美式英语用法。

6. 批评者认为，塑料购物袋消耗自然资源，制作过程消耗能源，塑料袋还会制造垃圾，使（误食它的）海洋生物窒息而死，并且增加填埋废物的数量。landfill:（废物、垃圾的）填埋。

7. petroleum: 石油；bring it over in tankers: 用液货船（或罐车）把它运过来；executive director: 执行董事。

8. extract: 榨取。

9. 爱尔兰的“塑料袋税”基本采用了征税的提议，根据其规定，自2002年3月开始，零售商需为每个（售出或赠送的）塑料袋支付20欧分。levy: 征税额。

10. imposition:（税的）征收；recycling: 循环使用，回收。

11. legislation: 立法。

12. agreeable: 同意的，愿意的。

13. uprising: 起义，暴动。

14. prominent: 突出的，显眼的；derisive: 嘲笑的，嘲弄的。

15. seal: 海豹。

16. debris: 垃圾，碎片。

17. better off: 较自在，较幸运；worse off: 更糟糕。

18. generate: 产生；pollutant: 污染物。

19. oxygen: 氧气；biodegrade: 生物降解。

20. refuse: 废料，垃圾。

21. visual: 视觉的；blight: 毁坏。

（来源：英语学习杂志）