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The European Union has moved a step closer to further limits on plastic after parliamentarians voted to ban items such as light grocery bags and hotel-style shampoo bottles.
Other items facing prohibition include single-use packaging for fruit, vegetables and condiments in restaurants, which in turn will be required to allow customers to bring reusable cups and containers with them when they dine in.
According to a European Parliament statement, the bloc’s plastic packaging waste “increased from 66 million tonnes in 2009 to 84 million tonnes in 2021.” Other estimates put the global total of plastic waste at 400 million tonnes a year.
“We now call on all industrial sectors, EU countries and consumers to play their part in the fight against excess packaging,” said Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries, discussing the proposals after the April 24 vote.
The measures have drawn a mixd reaction, with Virginia Jansens, managing director of industry organisation Plastics Europe, describing them as “ambitious,” even if they could prive “an important milestone in the transition to a circular [recycling] plastics economy.”
“MEPs are essentially handing European consumers an umbrella full of holes in a rainstorm of greenwashing,” said Lauriane Veillard, chemical recycling and plastic-to-fuels policy officer at Zero Waste Europe.
The proposals are to be put to EU member states,which will have to make sure 90% of permitted single-use plastics and cans are recycled via deposit return schemes – if they agree to pass the measures into law.
A deposit return scheme for most plastic bottles has been in place in Ireland since February, with consumers getting a receipt for reimbursement when they return the empties via recycling machines installed inside supermarkets.
The scheme has been widely criticised, however, with a beer importer complaining on a national radio station that his business is being “decimated” by the requirement. Consumers complained to local newspapers of long wait times and extra costs to use the system, which one shopper described as “vile.”
The latest proposed restrictions on plastic come after the EU in 2021 banned items such as plastic straws and cutlery and after the Parliament this week voted in favour of requiring manufacturers to fix broken gadgets, a measure the MEPs believe will reduce waste, including of plastic.
