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> Poorer nations typically have no/few refuse collection services, and people often just pile up and burn their own refuse or dump it in rivers to take it away.

Would it not make sense then if they had a container with which to collect and responsibly dispose of the refuse? A plastic bag perhaps?

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They have to put the bag somewhere. Paying for a guy to come around and haul your garbage away every week to be responsibly disposed in a secure landfill is laughably out of budget for a huge chunk of the world population.

Or maybe we could tackle the root of the problem, avoid waste that doesn't decompose on the human timescale.

Places that still have open defecation and garbage in the streets have bigger issues to be solved before we deduce plastic bags are the problem. E.g. third world.

Seattle and SF have banned plastic bags and the streets are still littered with human feces. Maybe for their next initiative they should pass out reusable bags for people to poop into. Sorry but a feel good measure to make grocery bags illegal doesn't move the needle for me when I still have to play hopscotch with literal logs of human shit.

These priorities are hilariously out of order.

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