Plastic bans

Plastic bans are laws that prohibit the use of polymers manufactured from petroleum or other fossil fuels, given the pollution and threat to biodiversity that they cause. A growing number of countries have instituted plastic bag bans, and a ban on single-use plastic (such as throw-away forks or plates), and are looking to spread bans to all plastic packaging, plastic clothing (such as polyester and acrylic fiber, or any other form of unnecessary plastic that could be replaced with an easily biodegradeable, non-fossil-fuel or non-polluting alternative. Plastics biodegrade over a long period of time, and may not biodegrade fully (so that they are absorbed into the ecosystemic) leaving traces of microplastics, ranging from 450 years for a PET plastic bottle (type 1) to thousands "never" for polypropylene-based products, including food containers (type 5).^[1]