How to win the war on single-use plastics — Morocco’s Zero Mika Law

When I visited Morocco in 2017, fairly early on my sustainable journey, something caught my eye when I was shopping in Marrakesh. I was offered a woven bag instead of a plastic bag. When I asked the local guide, he told me that the Zero Mika Law was just implemented about a year ago. After reading more on the topic, I found out that the Zero Mika Law is one of the most rigorous laws in the world on the fight against plastics. This law bans the ‘manufacture, import, export and commercial use of plastic bags’ and was enforced across the country in the time span of 6 months.

Now in 2017, I was a naive student who was passionate about sustainability, naturally, I was very excited about the prospect of this enforcement. However, as I deepened my knowledge on this topic, I slowly understood the difficulties of decoupling our society from plastics. Subsequently, I’ve learned many similar policies which are implemented in goodwill but yield much less than expected. Therefore, I wanted to use the Zero Mika Law, one of the strongest attempts to fight plastic waste, as a lesson in order to improve our future sustainable initiatives.

Strengths of Zero Mika

I wanted to start with the strengths of Zero Mika Law. When launched in 2016, the authorities were very strict on checks on markets and illegal stockpiles of plastics. The law also formed a support fund to convert major plastic manufacturers to produce alternative types of carrier bags. This…