The Ministry of Environment of South Korea confirmed on December 31, 2018 that South Korean large supermarkets is start from 2019.
The use of disposable plastic bags is completely prohibited to further reduce "white pollution".
The Ministry of Environment of South Korea issued a statement on its official website stating that, according to the "Law on Saving Resources and Promoting Resource Recycling", since January 1, 2019, more than 2,000 hypermarkets and 11,000 stores in South Korea have an area of over 165 square meters. In supermarkets, disposable plastic bags are completely banned.
Except for the plastic bags that must be used for fish and meat, related hypermarkets and supermarkets can only provide customers with environmentally friendly shopping bags, paper shopping bags, recyclable containers and other items. If it is found to use disposable plastic bags, the merchant will be fined up to 3 million won (approximately US$2,700). Previously, South Korean laws stipulated that hypermarkets and supermarkets were not allowed to provide disposable plastic bags for free.
According to the amendment, more than 18,000 pastry shops that were not previously included in the "plastic restriction order" will not be able to provide free plastic bags from 2019. In addition, South Korea's Ministry of Environment is working to promote a number of new measures, including encouraging laundry shops to reduce the use of plastic clothing bags.
The Ministry of Environment stated that it will cooperate with local governments from January to March 2019 to supervise the implementation of new measures to ban plastics on site. Officials from the Ministry of Environment said in a statement that in order to protect the environment and benefit the next generation, it is hoped that the public will actively participate in reducing the use of disposable products and forming an environmentally friendly consumer culture.
Even though it is hard to ban the use of disposable products, but we can use eco friendly disposable tableware (especially for biodegradable disposable tableware, biodegradable CPLA cutlery ) to protect our environment.