If I were to say to you what is the thing that you find littered on the beach most often I think that we would all probably say plastic bottles. So when I heard about the latest EU ban on 10 products instead of jumping for joy I was angry. The 10 products affected include plates, balloon sticks, food and beverage containers, cutlery, straws, and stirrers.
The use of plastic products over the last 70 years is exceptional. We now produce nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use, after which it is is thrown away. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year. Plastic is a valuable resource and plastic pollution is an unnecessary and unsustainable waste of that resource.
I mean how many ballon sticks have we all used versus how many plastic bottles. I took a step to not sell any drinks in plastic bottles in the shop because I think it’s such a problem and I’d like to try and do my bit. Even the fortune.com article on the ban has a header image of plastic bottles littering the shore line.
A million plastic bottles are transported around the world every minute and this figure will increase by another 20% by 2021. Current estimates are that more than half a trillion plastic bottles will be sold annually by the end of the decade. This demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being sold every second, is being caused by an increased desire for bottled water and beverages globally. As their use increases worldwide, attempts to recycle the bottles to prevent them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up. Less than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were collected for recycling and just 7% of those collected were recycled into new bottles. Instead most plastic bottles produced end up in landfills or in the oceans. (source askaboutireland.ie)
http://fortune.com/2019/03/28/eu-bans-single-use-plastic-items/
So why these 10 items – well in my opinion they are soft targets. Can you name a big brand that sells or uses balloon sticks! To take action on something that wold make the biggest impact they would have to go up against some of the big players. Pepsi, Coke, Evian, that’s some serious heavy weights to get into the ring with. Maybe the politicians want to be seen to be doing something but aren’t willing to go into battle to save our oceans.
It’s a step in the right direction but one thing that struck me is that the plastic straw issue is a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted. It was social pressure that got the likes of McDonalds to change their behaviour on the use of plastic straws so we could do the same for plastic bottles. Or did the politicians read it right. We all want to feel like we are doing our bit for the planet and a paper straw is an easy step. But when it comes to giving up our favourite beverage, or the convenience of a resealable bottle over a can, is it a step too far for most?