Forever Goodbyes to Single-use Plastic Products in the EU
On 3rd July 2021, the Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive was transposed into European national laws and effected. It is one of the legislations that support the Circular Economy Action plan laid down by the Commission in December 2015. The new law requires all 27 EU Member States to enforce the guidelines by 2023. Norway, being a member of the European Economic Area, also enacted this particular piece.
The Commission made its aim clear when setting out the guidelines: to prevent and reduce the impact of plastic products on the environment and human health.
Hence, the Commission hopes that by 2030, plastics circulating the European economy would be recyclable or reusable. Especially on the targeted items that compose 86% of Europe’s beach litters on counts.
What does the legislation entail?
When travelling to Europe, you would no longer see the presence of:
Cotton bud sticks
Cutlery, plates, straws, and stirrers
Balloons and sticks for balloons
Food containers and cups for beverages made of expanded polystyrene
Plastic bags
As a result, stakeholders such as producers, cafes, restaurants, and food businesses must switch to non-plastic alternatives. For instance, bamboo cups, cellulose-based, and biodegradable material options.
The following items would still be on the markets, but restrictively:
Fishing gears
SUP bags
Bottles and beverages/food containers for immediate consumption
Packets and wrappers
Cigarette butts
Wet wipes and Sanitary items
The EU proposes to limit usage by three means: raising awareness of reduced consumption, introducing design and labelling requirements such as connecting caps to bottles and being consumer-informative, and setting out waste management and clean-up obligations for producers through the Extended Producer Responsibility schemes.
Big goals and targets exist for separate collection of plastic bottles from 77% in 2025 to 90% in 2029, to incorporate 25% and 30% of recycled plastic in PET beverage bottles and all plastic beverage bottles from 2025 and 2030 respectively. Nevertheless, criticisms arose as those plans are being overshadowed by the broad definition of plastic.
“They have tried to define plastics in a legal sense, i.e. what exact properties make a material a plastic. But in trying to write that down, their definitions accidentally capture materials that they want to promote” says Aaron Kent, the founder of Hong Kong reusables company Please Drink Responsibly. (Source: Green Queen)
Innovation may be obstructed as FinnCERES, a Finnish competence center, notes that the definition risks prohibition of utilising bio-based materials for packaging and textiles. We may fall one big step behind in finding solutions to resolve some of the most pressing environmental issues today.
What about plastic production?
The World Economic Forum reported that from 1964 to 2014, plastic production had boomed from a mere 15 million tons to 311 million tons. That translates to an average of 5.92 million tons of plastics being produced each year during that fifty-years-time. It also expects that plastic production would double by 2050, to a hefty 622 million tons.
Yet, although being less visibly pictured, microplastics were never addressed by the legislation. Simply banning synthetic and chemically modified natural polymers does not prevent microplastics from intrusion into the nature and bodies of living creatures.
More loopholes?
The European Commission plans to revise the Directive in 2027. Does the six-years-gap between the implementation and a second revision allow sufficient time for countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Poland, which have yet to implement the Directive to rethink their decisions? Or does it act inversely to allow more time for delay and refrain? How would they ensure that within these six years, Member States would strictly comply with their promise of full implementation by 2023? Would the Union as a whole be able to keep up with the further challenges posed by the demand-supply chain?
The answer is still unknown.
By Ottilie Cheung