England Moves To Phase Out Several Single-Use Plastics

By the end of this year, disposable knives and forks, as you know them, won’t be the standard cutlery to come with the nosh at fish and chip shops in England. The nation is making great strides to wipe out unnecessary—but extremely commonplace—plastics, ultimately forcing consumer habits to shift and manufacturers to adapt.

Come October 2023, many single-use plastics such as plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, balloon sticks, and certain polystyrene cups and food containers will be prohibited in England. The government is giving an early heads-up to let affected businesses prepare for the transition.

Once the ban takes effect, people won’t be allowed to purchase these items from any business, including retailers, food vendors, takeout joints, and the hospitality sector.

The UK government details that England goes through about 2.7 billion pieces of single-use cutlery and 721 million disposable plates each year. The BBC cites the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that the average person in England uses 37 items of plastic cutlery and 18 single-use plastic plates every year. However, only one in 10 of these items are recycled.

The ban follows similar moves made by Scotland, Wales, and France, as well as expands upon England’s existing laws against plastic straws, drink stirrers, and cotton sticks, along with microbeads in rinse-off body care products. In April 2022, the UK also imposed a Plastic Packaging Tax on manufacturers and importers whereby plastic packaging made with less than 30% recycled plastic will cost them £200 per tonne.

Plastics can take up to 500 years to decompose, causing them to pile up in landfill and clog up water bodies while they wait for their demise.

“Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside, and I am determined that we shift away from a single-use culture,” describes Environment Minister Rebecca Pow. “By introducing a ban later this year we are doubling down on our commitment to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste.”

Businesses and customers have no doubt become reliant on single-use plastics, previously seen as a miracle material thanks to their convenience, affordability, and durability. So as to keep the way of life flowing, inventors are looking to create biodegradable plastic alternatives out of natural materials like seaweed and potatoes.

To help get rid of the waste that’s already sitting around in heaps, other innovators are upcycling them into more purposeful products, pushing the objects’ boundaries of being just single-use.

In a similar vein, the European Union is also working to end the distribution of single-use food packaging, disposable fruit and vegetable wrappers, and miniature hotel toiletries, among others, to make its packaging industry climate-neutral by 2050.

[via Mashable and BBC, cover photo 8760390 © Markussevcik | Dreamstime.com]