来源：《洛杉矶时报》
原文刊登日期：2022年11月4日
本文适合2024考生
Didn’t we ban single-use plastic shopping bags in California? Yes — in 2014, though the law didn’t take effect until two years later because the plastic industry tried to overturn it on the 2016 ballot.
加州不是禁止一次性塑料购物袋了吗？是的——在2014年就通过了这样的法律，尽管由于塑料行业试图在2016年的投票中推翻，这项法律两年后才生效。
But you can hardly tell from a trip to the grocery store, where there are still plenty of plastic bags at the checkout, albeit thicker versions that are supposedly better for the environment. (Spoiler alert: They are not.)
但是你去一趟杂货店就看不出来了，那里的收银台仍然有很多塑料袋，尽管更厚的塑料袋据说对环境更有利。(剧透：厚塑料袋并不会更环保。)
The law banning their flimsier cousins required sturdier replacement bags be offered for a fee, reusable up to 125 times and “recyclable in the state.” They would be available for shoppers who forgot to bring their own bags or who need a plastic bag that could be reused many times and would not end up in the waste stream.
这部禁止使用更脆弱的塑料袋的法律规定，营业场所要提供付费的更坚固的替代塑料袋，可重复使用125次，而且“在加州是可回收的”。对于忘记自带袋子，或者需要一个可重复使用多次且不会被丢弃的塑料袋的购物者，这些厚塑料袋是可获取的。
But over the last few years the rules haven’t been enforced and distribution of these thicker bags at grocery and other retail stores has proliferated. Also they are generally not being recycled — in the state or anywhere else. “These bags that were intended to be a true reusable bag, a low-cost reuse option, have become de facto single-use bags,” said Mark Murray of Californians Against Waste, one of the organizations leading the fight against disposable plastic packaging.
但在过去的几年里，这些规定并没有得到执行，这些较厚的塑料袋在杂货店和其他零售商店的销售量激增。而且，无论是在加州还是其他地方，它们通常都不会被回收。“这些原本是一种真正的可重复使用袋，一种低成本的重复使用选择，现在已经变成了事实上的一次性塑料袋，”领导反对一次性塑料包装的组织之一，加州人反垃圾组织的马克·默里说。
So much for California’s plastic bag ban. It seems we have simply replaced one environmental menace with another. That’s why it’s very good news that Attorney General Rob Bonta is cracking down. On Wednesday, he sent letters to the seven leading manufacturers of plastic grocery bags sold in California asking them to provide proof that their sacks are being recycled, as claimed. We can’t wait to see their response.
加州的塑料袋禁令到此为止。看来我们只是把一种环境威胁换成了另一种。这就是为什么加州总检察长罗布·邦塔正在进行打击是一个非常好的消息。周三，他致信在加州销售的七家主要塑料购物袋制造商，要求它们提供证据，证明塑料袋如它们所说的那样是被回收的。我们迫不及待地想看看制造商的反应。
Proof is going to be hard to come by since, as Bonta said, most, if not all, plastic bags probably aren’t being recycled. The majority of recycling programs aren’t able to handle them and there isn’t a reliable in-state market for their materials, he said. Indeed, environmental groups estimate that less than 6% of all single-use plastic in the United States is recycled.
正如邦塔所说，很难找到证据，因为大部分(如果不是全部的话)塑料袋可能都没有被回收。他说，大多数回收项目都无法处理这些塑料袋，而且加州也没有可靠的废旧塑料袋市场。事实上，环保组织估计，在美国，只有不到6%的一次性塑料袋被回收利用。
Does this signal the end of the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag in California, eight years after they were outlawed? We can only hope. It would be a fitting capper to a year in which the California Legislature passed a landmark measure, Senate Bill 54, that could reshape the U.S. plastic trash landscape over the next decade by prohibiting the in-state sale of all types of plastic packaging that can’t be recycled at high rates. Most plastic isn’t expected to meet that standard, so the law would have the effect of forcing the switch to truly reusable substitutes.
这是否标志着加州无处不在的塑料购物袋在被取缔八年后的终结？我们只能抱有希望。今年，加利福尼亚州立法机构通过了一项里程碑式的法令，即参议院第54号法案，该法案可能通过禁止在加州销售没有高回收率的所有类型的塑料包装，在未来十年重塑美国塑料垃圾景观，这将是一个合适的终结。大多数塑料预计不会达到这一标准，因此法律将迫使人们转向真正可重复使用的替代品。
Recycling is not — and never was — a realistic solution to deal with the millions of tons of disposable plastic that is used every year. The only long-term solution is to phase out all single-use plastic — certainly not allow a similarly environmentally bad substitute to take over.
回收不是——从来都不是——处理每年使用的数百万吨一次性塑料的现实解决方案。唯一的长期解决方案是逐步淘汰所有一次性塑料——当然不能让同样对环境有害的替代品取而代之。