The Entire European Union Just Voted To Ban All Single Use Plastics By 2021
In Brief
- The Facts:The Entire European Union Just Voted To Ban All Single Use Plastics By 2021, as it turns out recycling is not really effective as we've been made to believe.
- Reflect On:Why is it still legal to use plastics when so many biodegradable options exist?
The BBC has reported
that the European Parliament has voted to completely ban single-use
plastics
in an attempt to put an end to the seemingly unending stream of
plastic pollution filling our oceans.
Single-use plastic products include
anything, as the name suggests, that are used just once and then thrown
away. Some of these products are recyclable, however, they are rarely
recycled so they end up in our oceans and landfills. They include items
such as: straws, bags, take out containers, cotton swabs and cups. These
items can take several hundred years to degrade in the oceans and are
drastically interfering with marine life. 70% of all marine litter is
made up of single use plastics, according to the European Commission.
After enough public outcry and awareness
was raised over the issue — making it known that we need to act fast, a
vote at the European Parliament was held and a huge majority were in
favor of the ban, 571 yays to 53 nays and 34 abstentions agreeing to
enforce this ban by 2021.
One MEP said if no action was taken, “by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans”.
In addition to the 2021 all out ban on
many single use products, the use of plastics for which no alternatives
currently exist, such as food packaging, will also be required to be cut
down by 25 percent by 2025. 90 percent of beverage containers will also
be required to be collected and recycled by 2025.
“We have adopted the most ambitious
legislation against single-use plastics,” Frédérique Ries, the MEP who
proposed the bill, said in a statement.
“It is essential in order to protect the marine environment and reduce
the costs of environmental damage attributed to plastic pollution in
Europe, estimated at 22 billion euros by 2030.”
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It’s About Time
When we already have alternatives
available, why wouldn’t we ban such things that are harming and
polluting our environment? It is great to see this happening in the
European Union, and also many cities across North America, but perhaps
the rest of the world isn’t catching on so quickly. Sure it’s up to the
consumers to vote with their dollars and put their money where their
mouth is so to speak, but at what point will we hold our government
officials accountable for what they are legally allowing to continue?
The Guise Of Recycling
Unfortunately, many of us have simply
been duped, when it comes to plastic. We have been led to believe that
by recycling, we are protecting the environment from plastic pollution.
Hate to break it to you, but this is so far from the truth, it’s scary.
Hardly anything that we put out in those blue bins actually even gets
recycled at all. A large percentage of this “recycling” is shipped to
other countries to be “recycled”, but is rarely actually recycled at
all, and is often piled up in landfills or even burned.
Until recently China was a dumping
ground for a large portion of the world’s “recyclable” plastic, but the
country is no longer accepting the world’s non-industrial waste. After
years and years of collecting so much waste, the Chinese government has
now decided to stop collecting foreign trash.
Time For Change
It is clear that our current “solution”
to all of our plastic waste is not working, as the video says, we need
to find a better solution to this epidemic. Recycling standards
certainly need to become a lot more strict, and each country should be
held responsible for their own recycling and potentially laws should be
put in place by the UN that makes it illegal to export plastic waste and
recycling, this would then force us to come up with a better option. It
is not fair that there is no transparency towards what is really going
on with the public. If people really knew, it is likely that they would
take a stand against this.
Luckily, in developed nations we have
alternatives available to us, and we can make a choice to drastically
reduce the amount of plastic waste (let’s just call it what it is) we
are consuming, with or without a ban on plastics.
Unfortunately, in less developed
nations, where many our brothers and sisters are struggling just to stay
alive, plastic consumption may be the last thing on their mind.
Celebrate The Small Steps
Congratulations to the European
Parliament for agreeing that this was an issue that was worth doing
something about. Having government get involved makes it much easier to
create change on a mass scale, and we can hope that other nations will
follow suit and hopefully in our lifetimes, their will be no more single
use plastics — at all! Especially because we already have so many
alternatives available to us.
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