经济学人:非洲禁塑令 禁止塑料袋只是一小步(1)

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　　African Rubbish: Plastic bantastic 非洲垃圾：禁塑令

　　Banning the bag is a small step. 禁止塑料袋只是一小步。

　　Littering in graveyards¹ is generally frowned upon. 在墓地乱扔垃圾通常会引起反感。

　　But at the edge of Kangemi, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, a patch of land that used to be a final resting place for humans now serves as a rubbish dump. 但是在肯尼亚首都内罗毕的一个名为Kangemi的贫民窟的边缘地区，一片曾经的长眠之所现在变成了垃圾场。

　　A few mangy goats roam around, picking out scraps² of food. 脏兮兮的几只山羊在周围晃悠找零星的吃的。

　　Men, too, scrabble around. 人也一样，四处翻捡垃圾。

　　“This is where we find our daily bread,” says George Kimani, who collects aluminium³ cans and plastic bottles and sells them to recyclers. 在垃圾堆里拾铝罐和塑料瓶然后卖给回收站的乔治·基马尼说这里是他们每天的口粮来源。

　　But one thing is not of use, he says: plastic bags. 但他还说有一样是没用的——塑料袋。

　　Left behind by goats and men alike, they form a carpet of green, blue and white on the ochre earth. 人和山羊都不要的塑料袋在这片赭红色的土地上铺成绿色、蓝色和白色的一片。

　　Since their invention in the 1960s, disposable plastic bags have made lives easier for lazy shoppers the world over. 自20世纪60年代它们被发明以来，一次性塑料袋使世界各地的懒人购物变得轻而易举。

　　But once used, they become a blight⁴. 但一旦使用，它们就变成一颗环境毒瘤。

　　This is particularly true in poor countries without good systems for disposing of them. 这并非危言耸听，尤其是对于没有完备系统来处理它们的贫穷国家来说。

　　They are not only unsightly. 垃圾袋不仅仅是有碍观瞻。

　　Filled with rainwater, they are a boon⁵ for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. 它们在盛满雨水之后会成为携带疟疾的蚊子的温床；

　　Dumped in the ocean, they kill fish. 被倾卸在海洋里的话，垃圾袋还会杀死鱼类；

　　They may take hundreds of years to degrade. 并且它们要花上几百年才能自然分解。

　　On March 15th Kenya announced that it will become the second country in Africa to ban them. 3月15日，肯尼亚宣布其将成为非洲第二个禁止塑料袋的国家。

　　It follows Rwanda, a country with a dictatorial⁶ obsession⁷ with cleanliness, which outlawed⁸ them in 2008. 它之前是卢旺达，这个对卫生清洁有着专断式的追求的国家在2008年宣布塑料袋不合法。

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