A wave of bans on plastic bags, and sometimes on plastic straws, has greatly expanded in 2020 when legislation will slash millions of dollars worth of resin sold and dent industry employment.
In Mexico, where a plastic bag ban went into effect in 2020, producers have warned thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in economic activity would be lost. A similar ban also goes into effect in 2020 in all of the state of New York.
Producers across the region have reacted to such initiatives with proposals to support long-term recycling programs, or arguing that alternatives to plastics would carry bigger environmental costs.
Plastic resin producers in the Americas are concentrated in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Latin American and Caribbean markets are the biggest in population
