7 ms·

Germany to meet EU guidelines to ban single-use plastics by 2021

131 points by yboris 6y ago

standardUser 6y ago
Queue the armchair experts myopically explaining how banning plastics actually causes more harm than just using more of them and throwing them directly in the street.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, especially not when a thread is fresh. Threads are super sensitive to initial conditions. If you muck them up with (in this case) pre-emptive snark, it's likely to have a degrading effect on discussion quality.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Just fyi, it's "cue" not "queue". As in "stage cues".
teach 6y ago
I hope this doesn't turn out like the ban on single-use plastic shopping bags in Austin. Many grocery stores "complied" by replacing the single-use bags with much thicker "reusable" plastic bags. So now customers still don't bring their own bags into the store, the new bags still aren't easily recyclable and I suspect most are thrown away just as before. Edit: on the other hand, the city of Austin's waste management is very supportive of recycling and hopefully they'll support plastic film in the single-stream collection and make it much easier for the average person to do the right thing.
- andrew_eit 6y ago
  This may be a just factor of culture and attitude. In Germany, single use plastic bags have not been allowed in supermarkets for several years now and it has worked quite well IMO. Yes you can buy thicker re-usable bags (sometimes made out of textiles or a mixture of textiles and plastic) but by far many people bring their own bags, or just load the stuff into shopping trollies and take it to their cars (unfortunately the petrol/diesel car culture is still going strong :( ). Also, in places like Lidl and Aldi, it's quite normal to just look for an empty box of some product on the shelf(e.g. a box that had some canned goods) and use that as your 'basket', stuff your items there, pay, go home and dispose of the box in the paper recycle bin. EDIT: I also forgot to mention, as an example of culture/attitude: plastic bags are still available for fruit & vegetables but even then, people do make their own choice to just take the produce without a bag, and place it 'loose' at the cashier for them to weigh.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    That describes the behaviour I see in the UK very closely. I wonder about supermarket food in particular. Most of it comes in at least one layer of single use plastic - I think plastic can be the right product, but it would need reusable plastics that are standardised and used across different companies products. A bit like how nearly all Chinese takeaways use a variant of a cheap but reusable plastic container (but they're not quite standardised, particularly the radius of the lid corners). I'd love to see say 20 different allowed packages, you return after use, they're cleaned (or recycled if damaged), and used for more food. No more half full tubs carefully concealed with labels! I wonder what the stats say vs GPs impressions of Austin?
    - andrew_eit 6y ago
      Is it still common in the UK to find portioned or chopped servings of fruit, vegetables and food items in plastic packaging? I always found that a bit excessive, though convenient. This is something that I rarely see in Germany.
      - wiredfool 6y ago
        Ireland and the UK wrap all the Fruit and Veggies in more plastic than I've seen anywhere else. It's probably the biggest contributor to our waste stream in my house.
        reaperducer 6y ago
        Visit a store in Japan. Piece of fruit wrapped in cling film, shrink-wrapped in plastic, tucked into a foam lattice, placed into a styrofoam mold, put in a box, wrapped in paper, then wrapped again by the shop, placed in a small bag that goes into a larger bag. Even as an American, I never really knew wastefulness until I started going to Japan.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        It is common to have both options in the UK. Most people go for whole vegetables, and the chopped versions are seen as convenience options. Kinda half-way to a ready meal. You do also get whole vegetables in plastic packaging, but there has been a push to remove this. I believe one of the major supermarkets (Morrissons) has recently removed all plastic packaging from fresh produce.
- mperham 6y ago
  Loopholes are so maddening. We need to ensure full lifecycle consideration for all consumer products. If it doesn't decompose within N years, the manufacturer needs to have a recycling solution. The current situation has the free market degrading our public environment for private profit. As you note, why should a 1mm bag be banned but a 2mm bag be ok?
  - iso947 6y ago
    The cost to the environment should be borne upfront, with the benefit from recycling refunded at delivery (like bottle taxes) A good start would be a carbon tax, but crucially it would have to apply to imports too
- flurdy 6y ago
  Most countries/cities I have seen where free single-use plastic bags are banned people bring their own bags, as the "reusable" are too costly over time to use only once all the time.
- ghaff 6y ago
  My experience in Massachusetts (different culture probably) is that a lot of people did start using reusable bags--and I assume many, like me, found that they let you carry more stuff compared to minimalist plastic bags that could hold very little. Of course, that's all out the window now with reusable bags banned in stores indefinitely. And I assume it will take years before people go back to regularly using recyclable bags again in much of the US.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  Plastic bags were of this kind as long as I can remember where I live. I use them as trash bags and it turns out I need about the same amount of trash bags as I do shopping bags. So none of it ends up in nature (other than as the rest from incineration). If I brought multiple use bags to buy groceries I’d have to buy plastic bags to use for trash.
- jon1628492 6y ago
  Which grocery stores? I live in Austin. At H-E-B you must pay for the thicker bags at $.24/ea, which incentivizes people to bring their own. I bring the same ones every time now. At Central Market, Wheatsville & Whole Foods they give you paper bags. Not sure about Randalls or Sprouts though
- odysseus 6y ago
  Who says plastic grocery bags are single-use, though? Many people re-use them for dog/cat waste disposal, as laundry bags when traveling, packing material, soiled diaper disposal, for coating meat prior to cooking, etc. Now those people have to buy more plastic for these things, instead of re-using what they received while shopping.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  In the UK, they put a mandatory 5p charge on bags (reusable or not) instead of banning them outright. Remarkably this has led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use. The thicker reusable bags also now available here (usually costing 10p), and in practice they do actually see a lot of reuse.
- frereubu 6y ago
  For larger shops - supermarkets etc - the UK government has both banned single-use plastic bags and also made them charge for thicker plastic bags (10p in my local supermarket), which has noticeably decreased their use. Of course it hasn't eliminated them entirely.
- pkaye 6y ago
  In the Bay Area we can either bring our own reusable bag or get a paper back for 10c. That charge is enough for most people to bring their own bag or lug the groceries in the cart to the car.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dgellow 6y ago
As said in the body of the article, it’s a EU directive, Germany is just the first country to act on it but other will follow. I feel that should be part of the title instead of singling out one country.
- akerro 6y ago
  There are also other non-EU countries that are following this directive, Canada and Wales, it's a nice global movement.
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, good point. We've put that in the title.
andrew_eit 6y ago
I have strong feeling that in the coming decades we will see strong growth in the re-usable / repairable product market. It's high time we got more creative in the products we mass produce, we've grown complacent, something as simple as the plastic bag or the plastic straw have caused such environmental destruction yet can actually be phased out with behavioural modifications. I would also argue that reusability and repairability is a part of the equation of 'long-term economic mass production', at least for day-to-day necessities where sterilisation isn't paramount. Seriously, just looking at what I have lying around at home, even something as mundane and as simple as a broom seems to have special plastic elements (plastic hook on the top to hang on a wall, plastic lining in on the pole). There's a lot of unnecessary un-recyclable waste out there and while banning Single-Use plastics is a great step in the right direction, we need a paradigm shift in how we think about the objects we construct.
- vondur 6y ago
  I miss having glass Coke bottles. I can’t remember what shopping ing was like when I was really young, but I’d imagine plastic containers were rare. (1970’s)
pl-94 6y ago
This measure is more of a symbol than an effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Attacking symbols is a always nice, but isn't it a little bit late for that? I can't wait the day where EU will try for real to follow Paris agreement.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Is carbon emission reduction the goal? I didn’t see that mentioned, but rather an attack on “throw away culture.” You might possibly increase carbon emissions, at least in the short term, to accomplish that. However we’re drowning in plastic in our oceans, raining micro-plastics in our protected lands, and likely consuming a lot of leeched chemicals in the process.
- jankassens 6y ago
  I see this as primarily avoiding garbage in the environment. A paper bag or cotton swab with wooden stick just dissolves if it ends up in nature. Plastic versions are around for a long time.
- andrew_eit 6y ago
  I think you are talking about two different environmental issues. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the Paris Agreement covers climate change, carbon emissions, energy production, etc. The topic of single-use plastics, while related to sustainability, covers an entirely different emerging issue, namely: the infiltration of micro-plastics into our environment. Besides the environmental effects that microplastics already seem to have, such as hindering plant growth [1], microplastics are also entering the food chain, and making their way back to us. The long-term affects are as far as I know, quite unknown. [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01339 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01339
- balfirevic 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but how is it OK to ban stuff people find useful for purely symbolic reasons? And you say this so nonchalantly!
stock_toaster 6y ago
Does this also apply to medical devices? Some are disposable (like syringes) for sanitization reasons.
- jansan 6y ago
  There will be tons of exceptions. AFAIK this mainly targets plastic items for food (plates, cutlery, cups, straws, styrofoam packaging for takeaway food).
- jankassens 6y ago
  A different source [1] describes certain product categories. Initially products like swabs, forks, plates, cups, stick for balloons that have non-plastic alternatives. [1] German: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/umweltschutz-verbot-von-einweg-plastik-kommt-mitte-2021-a-51e5fb32-7dca-4139-a8a9-734a4b893d00 https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/umweltschutz-verbot-von-ei...
air7 6y ago
From my reading of the data, I feel that banning plastic bags (for example) would do more harm than good (in 1st world countries). The alternatives require more reuse than actually occurs in order to be environmentally viable [0], waste management makes sure that no garbage gets into the ocean and is either kept in a landfill or incinerated responsibility. And "dumping plastic overseas" is a non issue: Its at most 10% of the exporting country's plastic waste. It's not that plastic doesn't cause expenditure of resources but rather that life requiees that anyway and in most use cases plastic may be the most enviormently friendly way to answer a need such as a carrying vessel for forgetful people (again, in 1st world countries with excellent waste management) [0] https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...
- frereubu 6y ago
  "waste management makes sure that no garbage gets into the ocean" I don't think this is the case in reality though. I live in a coastal city in a "first world" country and waste management here can't deal with seagulls getting hold of bin bags and ripping them to pieces for the food inside, scattering plastics that blow into the sea. People are also terrible at disposing of things carefully - there's plenty of plastic waste floating around after a weekend of people on the beach.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >I don't think this is the case in reality though. I live in a coastal city in a "first world" country and waste management here can't deal with seagulls getting hold of bin bags and ripping them to pieces for the food inside, scattering plastics that blow into the sea. By "bin bags", I presume you're talking about the bags you use to put garbage in. If you get rid of those, what are you going to replace it with? Paper bags? Those aren't going to hold moist garbage very well.
    - frereubu 6y ago
      Yes, and I admit the mention of bin bags might have been an unintentional red herring. I was just intending to point out that even in a "first world" country with supposedly good waste management, lots of plastic gets into the sea. Better not to have the single-use plastic in the first place. Bin liners can be made from things like starch. Those are generally for compostable waste, but I don't believe for a moment that companies wouldn't come up with something suitable pretty rapidly if there was money to be made.
kachurovskiy 6y ago
It's always good to have less waste and single-use items. At the same time, maybe it's better to use the oil in it's processed form (plastic) before burning it[1] instead of burning it right away[2]? On the go, now you're forced to pick up a 500g single-use glass bottle instead of a 20g plastic bottle. Only 1-10k tons of German trash ends up in the ocean from 50M tons and I don't think plastic spoons are a material % of that. It's not that I love plastic, it's just the optimal choice for food packaging now. Saying "I don't use plastic spoons" while following current consumption standards makes no dent whatsoever. [1] https://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/muenchen-grosse-muell-luege-warum-verbrennen-wir-so-viel-abfall-9828158.html https://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/muenchen-grosse-muell-luege... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_consu...
- badestrand 6y ago
  > It's not that I love plastic, it's just the optimal choice for food packaging now. Saying "I don't use plastic spoons" while following current consumption standards makes no dent whatsoever. IMO the value is not only in the concrete measures taken (e.g. using wooden spoons) but in the overall trend. We have the movement away from plastic right now and while some single actions or policies may only have a negligible effect there is a huge value in the big picture: Research for alternative materials, lots of companies and consumers trying to figure our ways to reduce waste and plastic usage. And boom, after a few years or decades we might have a plastic free future where everyone consumes less and close to 100% of materials are recycled. Could we search for alternatives without banning single-use plastic bags? Probably yes but the workings of society are messy and not always rational so better take the path that actually works.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Oh my gawd! Now vee vill be burried under heapz of dogpoop! No, really. What about the dogpoo-bags? It's mandatory to pack the shit of your dogs into bags, and drop them into some trashbin in most places here. Example: https://www.hamburg.de/saubere-stadt/7174714/gassibeutel/ https://www.hamburg.de/saubere-stadt/7174714/gassibeutel/ https://www.hamburg.de/behoerdenfinder/hamburg/11260865/ https://www.hamburg.de/behoerdenfinder/hamburg/11260865/ https://www.hamburg.de/hundegesetz/ https://www.hamburg.de/hundegesetz/
- oseityphelysiol 6y ago
  I don't see why they can't be made out of paper.
BallinBige 6y ago
They also banned all ads for cigarettes & vapes. I think that's great.

131 points by yboris 6y ago

Queue the armchair experts myopically explaining how banning plastics actually causes more harm than just using more of them and throwing them directly in the street.

dang 6y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, especially not when a thread is fresh. Threads are super sensitive to initial conditions. If you muck them up with (in this case) pre-emptive snark, it's likely to have a degrading effect on discussion quality.
triceratops 6y ago
Just fyi, it's "cue" not "queue". As in "stage cues".

teach 6y ago

I hope this doesn't turn out like the ban on single-use plastic shopping bags in Austin. Many grocery stores "complied" by replacing the single-use bags with much thicker "reusable" plastic bags. So now customers still don't bring their own bags into the store, the new bags still aren't easily recyclable and I suspect most are thrown away just as before. Edit: on the other hand, the city of Austin's waste management is very supportive of recycling and hopefully they'll support plastic film in the single-stream collection and make it much easier for the average person to do the right thing.

andrew_eit 6y ago
This may be a just factor of culture and attitude. In Germany, single use plastic bags have not been allowed in supermarkets for several years now and it has worked quite well IMO. Yes you can buy thicker re-usable bags (sometimes made out of textiles or a mixture of textiles and plastic) but by far many people bring their own bags, or just load the stuff into shopping trollies and take it to their cars (unfortunately the petrol/diesel car culture is still going strong :( ). Also, in places like Lidl and Aldi, it's quite normal to just look for an empty box of some product on the shelf(e.g. a box that had some canned goods) and use that as your 'basket', stuff your items there, pay, go home and dispose of the box in the paper recycle bin. EDIT: I also forgot to mention, as an example of culture/attitude: plastic bags are still available for fruit & vegetables but even then, people do make their own choice to just take the produce without a bag, and place it 'loose' at the cashier for them to weigh.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  That describes the behaviour I see in the UK very closely. I wonder about supermarket food in particular. Most of it comes in at least one layer of single use plastic - I think plastic can be the right product, but it would need reusable plastics that are standardised and used across different companies products. A bit like how nearly all Chinese takeaways use a variant of a cheap but reusable plastic container (but they're not quite standardised, particularly the radius of the lid corners). I'd love to see say 20 different allowed packages, you return after use, they're cleaned (or recycled if damaged), and used for more food. No more half full tubs carefully concealed with labels! I wonder what the stats say vs GPs impressions of Austin?
  - andrew_eit 6y ago
    Is it still common in the UK to find portioned or chopped servings of fruit, vegetables and food items in plastic packaging? I always found that a bit excessive, though convenient. This is something that I rarely see in Germany.
    - wiredfool 6y ago
      Ireland and the UK wrap all the Fruit and Veggies in more plastic than I've seen anywhere else. It's probably the biggest contributor to our waste stream in my house.
      - reaperducer 6y ago
        Visit a store in Japan. Piece of fruit wrapped in cling film, shrink-wrapped in plastic, tucked into a foam lattice, placed into a styrofoam mold, put in a box, wrapped in paper, then wrapped again by the shop, placed in a small bag that goes into a larger bag. Even as an American, I never really knew wastefulness until I started going to Japan.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      It is common to have both options in the UK. Most people go for whole vegetables, and the chopped versions are seen as convenience options. Kinda half-way to a ready meal. You do also get whole vegetables in plastic packaging, but there has been a push to remove this. I believe one of the major supermarkets (Morrissons) has recently removed all plastic packaging from fresh produce.
mperham 6y ago
Loopholes are so maddening. We need to ensure full lifecycle consideration for all consumer products. If it doesn't decompose within N years, the manufacturer needs to have a recycling solution. The current situation has the free market degrading our public environment for private profit. As you note, why should a 1mm bag be banned but a 2mm bag be ok?
- iso947 6y ago
  The cost to the environment should be borne upfront, with the benefit from recycling refunded at delivery (like bottle taxes) A good start would be a carbon tax, but crucially it would have to apply to imports too
flurdy 6y ago
Most countries/cities I have seen where free single-use plastic bags are banned people bring their own bags, as the "reusable" are too costly over time to use only once all the time.
ghaff 6y ago
My experience in Massachusetts (different culture probably) is that a lot of people did start using reusable bags--and I assume many, like me, found that they let you carry more stuff compared to minimalist plastic bags that could hold very little. Of course, that's all out the window now with reusable bags banned in stores indefinitely. And I assume it will take years before people go back to regularly using recyclable bags again in much of the US.
alkonaut 6y ago
Plastic bags were of this kind as long as I can remember where I live. I use them as trash bags and it turns out I need about the same amount of trash bags as I do shopping bags. So none of it ends up in nature (other than as the rest from incineration). If I brought multiple use bags to buy groceries I’d have to buy plastic bags to use for trash.
jon1628492 6y ago
Which grocery stores? I live in Austin. At H-E-B you must pay for the thicker bags at $.24/ea, which incentivizes people to bring their own. I bring the same ones every time now. At Central Market, Wheatsville & Whole Foods they give you paper bags. Not sure about Randalls or Sprouts though
odysseus 6y ago
Who says plastic grocery bags are single-use, though? Many people re-use them for dog/cat waste disposal, as laundry bags when traveling, packing material, soiled diaper disposal, for coating meat prior to cooking, etc. Now those people have to buy more plastic for these things, instead of re-using what they received while shopping.
nicoburns 6y ago
In the UK, they put a mandatory 5p charge on bags (reusable or not) instead of banning them outright. Remarkably this has led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use. The thicker reusable bags also now available here (usually costing 10p), and in practice they do actually see a lot of reuse.
frereubu 6y ago
For larger shops - supermarkets etc - the UK government has both banned single-use plastic bags and also made them charge for thicker plastic bags (10p in my local supermarket), which has noticeably decreased their use. Of course it hasn't eliminated them entirely.
pkaye 6y ago
In the Bay Area we can either bring our own reusable bag or get a paper back for 10c. That charge is enough for most people to bring their own bag or lug the groceries in the cart to the car.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dgellow 6y ago

As said in the body of the article, it’s a EU directive, Germany is just the first country to act on it but other will follow. I feel that should be part of the title instead of singling out one country.

akerro 6y ago
There are also other non-EU countries that are following this directive, Canada and Wales, it's a nice global movement.
dang 6y ago
Ok, good point. We've put that in the title.

andrew_eit 6y ago

I have strong feeling that in the coming decades we will see strong growth in the re-usable / repairable product market. It's high time we got more creative in the products we mass produce, we've grown complacent, something as simple as the plastic bag or the plastic straw have caused such environmental destruction yet can actually be phased out with behavioural modifications. I would also argue that reusability and repairability is a part of the equation of 'long-term economic mass production', at least for day-to-day necessities where sterilisation isn't paramount. Seriously, just looking at what I have lying around at home, even something as mundane and as simple as a broom seems to have special plastic elements (plastic hook on the top to hang on a wall, plastic lining in on the pole). There's a lot of unnecessary un-recyclable waste out there and while banning Single-Use plastics is a great step in the right direction, we need a paradigm shift in how we think about the objects we construct.

vondur 6y ago
I miss having glass Coke bottles. I can’t remember what shopping ing was like when I was really young, but I’d imagine plastic containers were rare. (1970’s)

pl-94 6y ago

This measure is more of a symbol than an effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Attacking symbols is a always nice, but isn't it a little bit late for that? I can't wait the day where EU will try for real to follow Paris agreement.

azinman2 6y ago
Is carbon emission reduction the goal? I didn’t see that mentioned, but rather an attack on “throw away culture.” You might possibly increase carbon emissions, at least in the short term, to accomplish that. However we’re drowning in plastic in our oceans, raining micro-plastics in our protected lands, and likely consuming a lot of leeched chemicals in the process.
jankassens 6y ago
I see this as primarily avoiding garbage in the environment. A paper bag or cotton swab with wooden stick just dissolves if it ends up in nature. Plastic versions are around for a long time.
andrew_eit 6y ago
I think you are talking about two different environmental issues. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the Paris Agreement covers climate change, carbon emissions, energy production, etc. The topic of single-use plastics, while related to sustainability, covers an entirely different emerging issue, namely: the infiltration of micro-plastics into our environment. Besides the environmental effects that microplastics already seem to have, such as hindering plant growth [1], microplastics are also entering the food chain, and making their way back to us. The long-term affects are as far as I know, quite unknown. [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01339 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01339
balfirevic 6y ago
I'm sorry, but how is it OK to ban stuff people find useful for purely symbolic reasons? And you say this so nonchalantly!

stock_toaster 6y ago

Does this also apply to medical devices? Some are disposable (like syringes) for sanitization reasons.

jansan 6y ago
There will be tons of exceptions. AFAIK this mainly targets plastic items for food (plates, cutlery, cups, straws, styrofoam packaging for takeaway food).
jankassens 6y ago
A different source [1] describes certain product categories. Initially products like swabs, forks, plates, cups, stick for balloons that have non-plastic alternatives. [1] German: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/umweltschutz-verbot-von-einweg-plastik-kommt-mitte-2021-a-51e5fb32-7dca-4139-a8a9-734a4b893d00 https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/umweltschutz-verbot-von-ei...

air7 6y ago

From my reading of the data, I feel that banning plastic bags (for example) would do more harm than good (in 1st world countries). The alternatives require more reuse than actually occurs in order to be environmentally viable [0], waste management makes sure that no garbage gets into the ocean and is either kept in a landfill or incinerated responsibility. And "dumping plastic overseas" is a non issue: Its at most 10% of the exporting country's plastic waste. It's not that plastic doesn't cause expenditure of resources but rather that life requiees that anyway and in most use cases plastic may be the most enviormently friendly way to answer a need such as a carrying vessel for forgetful people (again, in 1st world countries with excellent waste management) [0] https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

frereubu 6y ago
"waste management makes sure that no garbage gets into the ocean" I don't think this is the case in reality though. I live in a coastal city in a "first world" country and waste management here can't deal with seagulls getting hold of bin bags and ripping them to pieces for the food inside, scattering plastics that blow into the sea. People are also terrible at disposing of things carefully - there's plenty of plastic waste floating around after a weekend of people on the beach.
- gruez 6y ago
  >I don't think this is the case in reality though. I live in a coastal city in a "first world" country and waste management here can't deal with seagulls getting hold of bin bags and ripping them to pieces for the food inside, scattering plastics that blow into the sea. By "bin bags", I presume you're talking about the bags you use to put garbage in. If you get rid of those, what are you going to replace it with? Paper bags? Those aren't going to hold moist garbage very well.
  - frereubu 6y ago
    Yes, and I admit the mention of bin bags might have been an unintentional red herring. I was just intending to point out that even in a "first world" country with supposedly good waste management, lots of plastic gets into the sea. Better not to have the single-use plastic in the first place. Bin liners can be made from things like starch. Those are generally for compostable waste, but I don't believe for a moment that companies wouldn't come up with something suitable pretty rapidly if there was money to be made.

kachurovskiy 6y ago

It's always good to have less waste and single-use items. At the same time, maybe it's better to use the oil in it's processed form (plastic) before burning it[1] instead of burning it right away[2]? On the go, now you're forced to pick up a 500g single-use glass bottle instead of a 20g plastic bottle. Only 1-10k tons of German trash ends up in the ocean from 50M tons and I don't think plastic spoons are a material % of that. It's not that I love plastic, it's just the optimal choice for food packaging now. Saying "I don't use plastic spoons" while following current consumption standards makes no dent whatsoever. [1] https://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/muenchen-grosse-muell-luege-warum-verbrennen-wir-so-viel-abfall-9828158.html https://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/muenchen-grosse-muell-luege... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_consu...

badestrand 6y ago
> It's not that I love plastic, it's just the optimal choice for food packaging now. Saying "I don't use plastic spoons" while following current consumption standards makes no dent whatsoever. IMO the value is not only in the concrete measures taken (e.g. using wooden spoons) but in the overall trend. We have the movement away from plastic right now and while some single actions or policies may only have a negligible effect there is a huge value in the big picture: Research for alternative materials, lots of companies and consumers trying to figure our ways to reduce waste and plastic usage. And boom, after a few years or decades we might have a plastic free future where everyone consumes less and close to 100% of materials are recycled. Could we search for alternatives without banning single-use plastic bags? Probably yes but the workings of society are messy and not always rational so better take the path that actually works.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Oh my gawd! Now vee vill be burried under heapz of dogpoop! No, really. What about the dogpoo-bags? It's mandatory to pack the shit of your dogs into bags, and drop them into some trashbin in most places here. Example: https://www.hamburg.de/saubere-stadt/7174714/gassibeutel/ https://www.hamburg.de/saubere-stadt/7174714/gassibeutel/ https://www.hamburg.de/behoerdenfinder/hamburg/11260865/ https://www.hamburg.de/behoerdenfinder/hamburg/11260865/ https://www.hamburg.de/hundegesetz/ https://www.hamburg.de/hundegesetz/

oseityphelysiol 6y ago
I don't see why they can't be made out of paper.

BallinBige 6y ago

They also banned all ads for cigarettes & vapes. I think that's great.