Shopkeepers and businesses in Mexico City are switching to more environmentally friendly alternatives for plastic bags this week, as a law banning non-biodegradable plastic bags comes into effect.

Mexico City's assembly passed the law last month and vendors in El DF have a year to comply.

News agency, the Associated Press, said, "Wal-Mart is trying to recycle plastics and sell cloth totes at checkout counters [and] supermarket chains Soriana and Comercial Mexicana have switched to oxo-biodegradable plastic bags, which they say take less than two years to break down."

The new rules apply to all stores, service providers and production facilities within the central Federal District, where almost 9 million people live. Some 10 million more people that live in the surrounding areas that make up greater Mexico City will also benefit.

According to CNN news in the US, Mexico City has now become the second largest metropolitan zone in the Western Hemisphere to prohibit ecologically damaging plastic bags, San Francisco being the largest.

They also said that only one in ten of the plastic bags used in the US is currently recycled.

The outlawing of harmful bags in Mexico City forms part of the local authority's plan to clean up and be more environmentally-friendly. They are competing to be the cleanest city in Mexico in a national competition launched by Mexico's Environmental Ministry, business association Grupo Salinas and NGO Fundación Azteca, earlier this year.

In June this year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) also called for a global ban on plastic bags.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UNEP, said, "Single use plastic bags ... should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere."

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