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Europe Plans Ban on Plastic Cutlery, Straws and More (cnn.com)
Europe is proposing a ban on single-use plastic items such as cutlery, straws and cotton buds in a bid to clean up the oceans. From a report: The European Commission wants to ban 10 items that make up 70% of all litter in EU waters and on beaches. The list also includes plastic plates and drink stirrers. The draft rules were unveiled Monday but need the approval of all EU member states and the European Parliament. It could take three or four years for the rules to come into force. The legislation is not just about banning plastic products. It also wants to make plastic producers bear the cost of waste management and cleanup efforts, and it proposes that EU states must collect 90% of single-use plastic bottles by 2025 through new recycling programs.
Maybe look into some bamboo cutlery.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
then take your own plastic utensils with you wherever you go.
Please don't let this spread to the U.S. I have some problem that makes the touch of metal silverware on my teeth feel like scratching my fingernails on a chalkboard, and I need to request plastic utensils everywhere I go because of that.
Did you consider not biting your cutlery?
Seriously, I don't think anyone likes the feel of cutlery touching their teeth, that's why most people place the fork/spoon in their mouth then pull the cutlery out using their lips to separate the food from the utensil.
I'm pretty confident I go weeks at a time eating without cutlery touching my teeth.
I stole this Sig
So just because you can't be bothered to remember to bring some alternative cutlery for your bizarre issue the health of the world's oceans should be continued to be out at risk. #wow
Why would that be difficult/annoying/awkward? Maybe a bit harsh, but you are the one with the problem, why do others need to provide a solution when you can solve it quite easily yourself?
Sig?
So you do nothing, because others should get their act together first? Why not start with the man in the mirror?
Sig?
Sure it's for safety. They just trust passengers in business more, so no safety issue with giving them metal utensils :)
This is great news. But Europe is already doing a lot to clean up and reduce its plastic use. This is most urgently needed pretty much everywhere else. In particular both in the US and in Asia. The sight of roadsides, fields and beaches littered with tons of plastic waste is ubiquitous in those places - and we all pay the price.
There is no reason for most of current plastic use other than externalizing disposal costs so that everyone bears those.
In economy, you always start with the activity that has the highest marginal product. That way you maximize your output for a given amount of inputs. If you're serious about environment, you start with the worst offenders. Even if Europe paid for the cleaning up Asia or Africa, that would probably be still the most beneficial scenario.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you really want to do the right thing by Mother Nature, ban disposable diapers.
#DeleteChrome
What you're describing doesn't make any sense. You're suggesting that problems shouldn't be tackled unless they're solved in only the most efficient way possible, and if they're not, then they shouldn't be solved at all. That's kinda' nutty.
I don't respond to AC's.
Parts of Europe still does loads of dumping of their garbage in the oceans.
Likewise, 5 nations are responsible for 60% of all garbage in the ocean.
It turns out that five countries are the leading contributors to this crisis. And all are in Asia. In a recent report, Ocean Conservancy claims that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas.
America stopped decades ago, so instead, we have had it going to China and other nations. That also needs to stop. ALL OF IT. Far better for America to recycle, bury, or burn it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This ban is something that has been happening all over the world in some shape or form. Personally, I have little problem with it. I'm actually happy to see when a restaurant or coffee shop has utensils that are biodegradable. It's a great move.
What I don't like, from the end of this article, is the other part of the EU proposal. Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please? There are so many analogies to make here, it's not worth it.
People ultimately need to be held responsible for proper disposal and/or recycling of materials and consumables they are consuming. The manufacturer in this case isn't building in some weird feature making it difficult to throw the stirring straw in a garbage can. People just need to start being more responsible and not thinking that someone else will clean up after them.
It's pretty basic. Currently manufacturers are not responsible for the costs of disposing of their products. They can make them as toxic and environmentally problematic as they want because they can offload the costs and problems their products cause after the end of their useful lives on the taxpayer and the environment. If you make manufacturers responsible for paying not only for development, marketing, sales and product support but also for disposal you motivate the manufacturers to come up with new and innovative methods to make their products as easily and cheaply recyclable as possible in order to maximise profits. It's just a way to leverage the inventiveness of private industry and the workings of the free market to solve a very serious problem that results form own activities of companies and I think it will work because industry tends to be good at coming up with clever ways of solving sticky problems if profits are at stake. Now, I'm sure that you, as libertarian, find this idea terribly unjust but the rest of us find it equally unjust that private profit making companies can drown us in plastic garbage, make us pay for the mess and not be in any way responsible for solving that problem. Unfortunately for the manufacturers Europe is a cluster of democracies and the people drowning in plastic garbage are in charge, not the industrialists. I'm pretty sure most Europeans will welcome this measure.
Anyone who likes to eat and drink -- this junk eventually re-enters our bodies via the ecosystem.
Why do you need a straw unless you're disabled or are doing drive-through (much less popular in Europe anyway)? Even with a drive-through, it doesn't kill anyone to stop for 5 minutes to eat and drink instead of slobbering all over the car.
This will hurt fast food
Most fast food doesn't require utensils. Burgers, fried chicken, and pizza are all "finger food". Chinese takeout uses wood or bamboo chopsticks, which are biodegradable.
When I get plastic utensils or straws with my order, 90% of the time I throw them out without even using them. I for one welcome the ban. Good riddance.
I've experienced it too. It has nothing to do with biting. It's due to a galvanic reaction between the metal in the cutlery and the fillings in your teeth. If you have fillings, and there's sufficient saliva in your mouth, and the cutlery and your fillings are far enough apart on the galvanic series, it creates a weak electrical current through your mouth and teeth which feels awful. I only noticed it when I visited a friend who served me a meal with "fancy" gold-plated cutlery, but I would imagine different people are sensitive to different levels of current.
It's similar to chewing on aluminum foil if you have fillings, except in that case the aluminum makes direct contact with your fillings so the current is much higher.
I think the GP means wax-coated paperboard, like old-fashioned milk cartons.
Or waxed paper. That's how straws were made back in the old days. It meant you had to spend time drinking a milk shake or ice cream soda, because you couldn't force-suck it through the straw. People actually sat around and talked while enjoying a milk shake or ice cream soda. I know, weird!
"The biggest logistical problem with all of these idiotic "Let's ban plastic [insert product here]" ideas is that almost invariably there is no adequate alternative."
Umm... IDK. Paper straws? Some restaurants are experimenting with straws make from pasta, and some are even using "gasp" straw (reeds, actually).
"When we ask ourselves why these utensils are turning up in streams and rivers, we come up with only three real possibilities:"
If one were to actually read up on the subject instead of constructing straw men to knock down, one might find that plastic straws, being extremely lightweight, tend to avoid sweepers, are easily carried into sewers and waterways, and have quite a few other problems.
"They're all failures of the government to do their f**ing jobs."
I thought the mantra was that the government was supposed to do nothing at all and let the "invisible hand" of the "free market" sort things out.
Hard to keep up these days.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I've noticed in the past few years that I get metal cutlery on flights. The knives have blunt tips.
Here in the US, knives and forks are always blunt. I grew up with forks with sharp tines that you could spear peas with, but when I moved, I discovered that Americans have never seen or heard of sharp tined forks, and used forks like if they were spoons, upside down. And knives - well, even steak knives are blunt, they're just serrated. Which, of course, steak knives shouldn't be. None of them could possibly sharpen a pencil, even.
I think it's partially a liability thing - if someone hurts themselves with sharp cutlery, there will be lawsuits. And partially Americans being exceptionally yellow, I mean risk-averse.
It makes perfect senses. You're not taking into account opportunity cost. Money you spend tackling this problem, is money you don't have available to tackle other problems.
Given a multitude of problems, and limited resources (money) for tackling those problems, you maximize the reduction in problems by applying your resources most efficiently. By tackling the worst but easiest-to-fix problems first, even if that means leaving smaller but more-costly-to-fix problems unresolved.
Your way of thinking is why we waste billions of dollars trying to make air travel safer to prevent a few hundred deaths per year, while over a million people die in car accidents every year. Or why nuclear power is a pariah, when statistically it's the safest power source man has ever invented (yes, safer than renewables). You prioritize tackling the problem which has the greatest emotional impact (i.e. in proportion to news coverage), rather than the problem which will yield the greatest numerical decrease for the smallest expenditure.
Conventional plastics degrade/release the chemicals very very slowly, causing very little actual chemical harm to the environment.
Um, No.
Also, your definition of biodegradable
"Biodegradable" means that the chemicals in the product are released into the environment quickly.
seems a little too conveniently crafted for supporting your thesis.
I think this one is a bit more accurate
No it doesn’t. Plastic is inert. That’s why we use it.
Humans are already ingesting microbeads through eating seafood and they have also made it into our tap water.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I've worked with a food truck that does aome of the festival circuit in the midwest, where single-use plastic utensils are either heavily shunned or banned outright.
They looked at getting disposable wooden spoons for their dishes that require a spoon, and found it was cheaper to buy cheap stainless steel spoons and just hope that they come back.
Most of them do come back. They get washed and reused. The others (hopefully) get recycled in one of the many dozens of recycling bins, or maybe saved by the patron for their own reuse.
It is not as absurd as you think it is.
Kid-proof tablet..
Take a McDonaldâ(TM)s salad for example. Stop providing forks and people are likely to stop buying salads.
(facepalm)
They're only going to be forbidden from providing single use plastic forks. They can provide wooden forks, metal forks, even recycled/reusable plastic forks. Use your fucking imagination.
Or use your fingers. You use them for the fries, the burgers, to dip the nuggets... what's wrong with touching a few leaves?
(and who goes to McDonalds to eat salads anyway?)
No sig today...
I must admit I'm entirely fucking bewildered by the number of people that seem to need to drink out of a straw.
At least there are now adult sippy cups available, and the branding on them is clever too - 'sports bottle' almost sounds mature.
Plastic is inert.
So is asbestos. Free tip: Don't ever classify something complicated by a single simple property.