European Union Voted To Ban Single-Use Plastics By 2021

littered beach scene.

floating plastic debris.

Go to any beach and one of the things you will find is plastic debris that has been either thrown to the ground by beach goers or thrown into the water by irresponsible boaters.   Far worse are the large areas of the ocean where currents have collected huge masses of plastic debris - debris that is unceasingly harming sea life and marine birds.  Some parts of the world are more responsible than others in terms of not littering - from my experience, many parts of Europe are far more litter free than much of America.  Living on a tidal creek, the amount of trash that washes in with the tide or worse yet washes down stream is ridiculous and leaves one thinking Americans are pigs.  The European Union wants to reduce plastic debris even more and just voted for a ban on "single use" plastic and will impose stiff recycling requirements on other plastics such as plastic bottles.  A piece in Forbes looks at the move which, in my view should be followed by the USA, Canada and western hemisphere nations.  Here are excerpts (note that the USA under Trump/Pence is one of the countries undermining needed action):

[T]he European Parliament has voted to ban single-use plastics across the board in an attempt to stop the unending stream of plastic pollution making its way into the oceans.

Such plastic products are, as the name suggests, used just once and then thrown away. They include things like straws, plates, cups and cotton buds, and can take several centuries to degrade in the oceans where they are increasingly observed to be consumed by marine life. According to the European Commission, such plastics make up 70 percent of all marine litter.

A ban was proposed in May after the public outcry and awareness over the issue reached a new zenith. A vote at the European Parliament was held earlier this week, with a huge majority of MEPs – 571 yays to 53 nays, with 34 abstentions – agreeing to enforce the ban by 2021.

The ban is, at a glance, comprehensive. Aside from the 2021 complete ban on plenty of singleuse products, the use of plastics for which no alternatives currently exist – mostly food packaging – will have to be cut down by 25 percent by 2025. Beverage bottles will also required to be collected and recycled at a rate of 90 percent by 2025. Cigarette butts, remarkably resilient components of plastic pollution, will have to be reduced by 50 percent by 2025, and 80 percent by 2030.

[D]espite the persistent Brexit nightmare looming on the horizon, it’s possible – although not certain – that this rule will go into effect and apply to the UK too before the end of the transition period and the country’s grim divorce from the EU is complete.

“It is essential in order to protect the marine environment and reduce the costs of environmental damage attributed to plastic pollution in Europe, estimated at 22 billion euros by 2030.” . . . Garbage patches reaching ludicrous areas can be found pretty much anywhere, from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans right up to the especially fragile Arctic.

Things clearly can’t stay the same, and an increasingly multidisciplinary approach to dealing with the problem is at least appearing to gain steam. There are, in crude terms, three major prongs to this: engineering, political action, and public awareness.

This latest move seems to be a rare political action that might end up making a difference. Although plenty of national governments appear to want to do something, what usually happens is dissenting, powerful voices manage to weaken proposals that otherwise might provide an effective, united front.

Back in December 2017, for example, a UN resolution was tabled that aimed to prevent any plastic from entering the waterways of the world. Originally legally enforceable, protestations from the US rendered it non-mandatory and far less sweeping in its scope.

At the G7 summit in Quebec this summer, a similar agreement was put forward. Although it focused on the wider issue of ocean health, it also made a point about the importance of scaling back the use of plastics that inevitably end up in the sea. The US and Japan, sadly, failed to sign on to that section of the blueprint.

Lest we forget, the plastic manufacturing industry is a colossus that has a huge influence over countries’ various decisions over plastic. Certainly, public awareness of the problem is a good thing – even if things like bans on plastic straws are probably misleading the public as to the true scale (and causes) of the crisis – but individual action will only go so far. Unless there’s an industry-wide change, vast quantities plastic will still make it into the oceans.

That’s where engineering comes into the story. There are research groups all over the world currently working on ways to rid ourselves of single-use plastics once and for all, with some projects showing more promise than others. There are some that suspect that making plastic 100 percent recyclable is the way forwards, and proof-of-concept, low-energy intensive plastics that can achieve this have been invented. Others suspect that biodegradable plastics, those that break down quickly after use and can’t pollute, may be our best bet.

It must be stressed that such projects are still very much early days endeavors, so right now, it seems clear that stopping plastic getting into the oceans in the first place is of the utmost importance.

Without enforceable, coordinated, international action on the issue, plastic pollution will wreak increasing havok across the planet, damaging environments and ecologies for generatios to come.