‘A victory’

The European Parliament has voted to ban a whole range of plastic products that are polluting land, rivers and seas.

A majority of MEPs backed a report that proposes banning straws, plates, cutlery and balloon sticks; stringent reduction targets for other plastics and the introduction of producer responsibility on food containers, tobacco products and wet wipes.

In the run-up to the vote, the UK government announced a more limited consultation on ‘banning the distribution and/or sale of plastic straws, stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds.’

‘This decision is a victory for the health of the planet. Plastic waste is a truly global problem, touching every corner of the planet. Shocking images of the scale of the problem and how plastic is flooding our oceans and destroying wildlife has helped push this issue up the political agenda.

‘Today’s vote is a sign that there is a global race to the top on addressing plastic pollution, and the EU has demonstrated it wants to be one of the front runners.’

MOLLY SCOTT CATO
Green MEP for the South West

Tackling microplastics

The European Parliament also agreed to a Green proposal to include a ban on oxo-plastic, which is often marketed as biodegradable but in reality fragments and turns into microplastic.

A recent report has identified for the first time that microplastics have been found in human stools and may be passing through the bodies of around 50% of the global population.

‘Single-use plastics are choking our marine environments and, as new research finds, polluting our bodies. It is vital, therefore, that so many MEPs have joined the Greens today in voting for strong proposals to ban some of the most toxic offenders.

‘The proposals aren’t a panacea, of course; there is much more to be done. The UK government has a recent history of claiming EU progress as their own. Rather than trying to take undeserved credit on this, I’m calling on Ministers to use EU action as a starting point for even tougher domestic measures. A race to the top on tackling plastic pollution would be welcome.’

KEITH TAYLOR
Green MEP for the South East and a member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee

A missed opportunity?

Samantha Harding, litter programme director at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said it’s ‘fantastic’ to see other countries taking ‘such significant measures to tackle the scourge of drinks and food containers, as well as a wide-range of unnecessary single-use plastic products’.

But Samantha added that more must be done in addition to the ban. She suggests an ‘improvement tax’ on other plastic products that need to be redesigned or improved in terms of recyclability, charges to encourage reduced use of certain products and making use of ‘the power of deposits to encourage people to return packaging for recycling via collection systems paid for by the producers of that packaging.’

WWF said the European Parliament ‘lost a vital opportunity to eliminate legal loopholes associated with definitions of single-use plastic’.

Any product labelled as reusable or re-fillable, even if the product design demonstrates that it is not intended for multi-use, now falls outside the EU Single-use Plastic Directive scope.

It is therefore up to consumers to determine whether these items remain destined to be plastic pollution, rather than providing clear limitations on the plastic manufacturers from the beginning of the product’s life.