Decade-long war on plastic bags fails to yield results

"No more plastic bags," newspaper titles touted on August 10, after the publication of a joint ministerial decree announcing that consumers would have to pay 3 cents for each plastic shopping bag used as of January 1, 2018, and 7 cents as of January 1, 2019.

The decision was aimed at bringing Greece in line with a European Commission directive from 2015, which set a target of reducing dependence on plastic carrier bags by 50 percent through 2017 and 80 percent by 2019. Environmental groups hailed the initiative, which, after all, had been in the pipeline for nearly a decade.

It was January 2008 when Greek newspapers reported that "plastic bags in Athens will soon be a thing of the past." The crusade had been declared by then mayor of Athens Nikitas Kaklamanis, who went on to sign a memorandum of cooperation with most of the country's big supermarket chains so that they...