Kenya has passed the world’s strictest ban against plastic bags in efforts to protect the environment and wildlife. Under the new law, people producing, selling or even using plastic bags could now face up to four years in prison. This is the Kenyan environmental minister, Judi Wakhungu.

Judi Wakhungu: “The challenge that we have at the moment is that most of these bags are just littered, and then you find them in our water bodies, we find them littering our landscapes, we also—they are also ingested by our livestock. The problem with this is that now we are also ingesting these microplastics, and this is a danger to our health. So this is the reason why we decided to start a phase-out of banning the plastic bags, starting with the carrier polythene bags.”

More than 40 countries now have some types of laws aimed at decreasing the use of plastic bags.