Turkey introduces plastic bag fees

Plastic bags.Photo: Berit Roald / NTB scanpix

From now on, all stores in Turkey which have offered free plastic bags in the past to customers, now have to pay for them have, in an effort to improve the environment.

From the first day of the year, all Turkish outlets, including supermarkets and shops, will require at least 25 cusps, about 40 cents for plastic bags that have been free before.

Stores that fail to do so risk being fined, according to a law amendment adopted in December.

  • Plastic bags at all outlets, including textile stores, toy stores, electronics stores, food stores and the like, must be sold for at least 25 cure from January 1, writes the Ministry of Environment on its website.

According to the government of Ankara, about 35 billion plastic bags are used in the country each year. This corresponds to 440 plastic bags that are used only once per person during the year, a figure that is much higher than in some EU countries, where the average is below 10 one-time bags per person annually.

In Denmark, the annual consumption of plastic bags were four per person in 2017, according to the EU Commission.

Turkey’s government aims to reduce the number of plastic bags per person to 90 by the end of the year. Then the goal is to cut the figure down to 40 bags annually in 2025. It takes 400 years for nature to break down a plastic bag, and it is expensive to recover plastic bags, informs Minister of Environment Murat Kurum.

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today