Single-use plastic plates and cutlery could be banned in England

In an effort to address the growing plastic waste problem, the British government has decided to outlaw single-use items including plastic cutlery, plates, and polystyrene trays, according to the BBC. Therese Coffey, the environment secretary, acknowledged the action and stated that it "would help protect the environment for future generations". The UK has already banned some single-use plastic items, including straws, stirrers and cotton buds.  Prominently, single-use plastic describes things that are used just once and then immediately discarded.

Specifically for takeout food and drink from cafes and restaurants, Ms. Coffey plans to outlaw a number of single-use plastic products, including plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery, balloon sticks, and specified types of polystyrene cups and food containers.The move follows a consultation on the issue by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that ran from November 2021 to February 2022.

A department spokesperson confirmed to NPR that the full announcement is coming on Saturday. 

"A plastic fork can take 200 years to decompose — that is two centuries in landfill or polluting our oceans," Environment Secretary Therese Coffey told The Mail. "This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations.”

It aims to minimize plastic pollution

In 2020, England outlawed single-use plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds with plastic stems. This new law only affects the plastic packaging of food and beverages purchased from cafés and restaurants, not from supermarkets and retail establishments. The government intends to solve issues through a different program that would start covering disposal costs in 2024 and require manufacturers to do so.

And it's not completely unexpected. Environmentalists have long advocated for such a ban in England — Scotland's went into force this summer, and Wales adopted one in December — and the British government has been asking public feedback on prospective plastic bans for some time. Last month, officials hinted such limits were on the horizon.

(Meanwhile, in the United States, some states and municipalities have prohibited certain plastic goods, such as bags, while California set the country's strongest plastic reduction restrictions in legislation approved last summer. By 2032, the federal government intends to phase out single-use plastics in national parks.)

Even while it won't solve the problem of plastic waste entirely, environmentalists are praising England's ban as a significant step in the right direction.

According to Defra statistics cited by the BBC, each person in England uses an average of 18 single-use plastic plates and 37 pieces of plastic cutlery each year, but only 10% of that garbage is recycled into new products. According to the department, England consumes 4.3 billion single-use pieces of flatware and 1.1 billion single-use plates annually. That's both dangerous for the environment and "completely unnecessary," says Steve Hyndside, the policy manager at British nonprofit City to Sea.

He stressed in a Monday interview with radio station LBC that all of the items covered by this ban already have potential replacements on the market, whether that's cardboard boxes, wooden utensils or even one's fingers.

"What we're talking about here is, I think, a really positive vision," Hyndside said. "So as much as we all like the convenience of single-use plastic, and I think there's no point pretending that's not there ... we just can't carry on going as we are."

There is public support for the ban ...

The elimination of unnecessary plastic waste is mandated under England's 25 Year Environment Plan, which was formed in 2018.

In November 2021, Defra declared that although it had already proposed and put into effect steps to strive toward that objective, those actions had not effectively addressed the problem of single-use plastic goods. It appears that its decision was influenced by public feedback received during a consultation session that extended through February 2022 on prospective bans.

"I am determined to drive forward action to tackle this issue head on," Coffey told The Mail. "We know there is more to do, and we have again listened to the public's calls."

Greenpeace UK says the "vast majority" of the more than 51,000 people who self-reported their views on the consultation support a ban on all of the items up for consideration (like cutlery and plates), with support at 96% or above "across the board."

Separately, after the comment period ended in February, environmental organizations delivered a petition to the prime minister's office with more than 117,000 signatures calling for the outlawing of such products.

Environmental organizations praised the new ban when rumors of it emerged, calling it an important step but only one of several that the government needs to do to have a significant impact.

"We need to wean ourselves off single-use items," tweeted environmental organization Keep Britain Tidy. "[Defra's] plans to ban single-use plastic plates and cutlery in England are a step in the right direction."

... and calls for further action

Many people want to see greater, structural improvements. Greenpeace, City to Sea, and 38 Degrees urged the government to move more quickly to comply with the European Union's single-use plastic limits, which it promised prior to Brexit, as part of their "Cut the Cutlery" campaign. Additionally, they want it to establish its own, legally obligatory goals for 2025, namely a 50% decrease in single-use plastics and a 25% increase in recyclable plastic.

Advocates are also calling for a "deposit return scheme," which would incentivize recycling by charging customers a deposit on beverage containers and refunding it when they return the empty container to a collection point. U.K. officials have said that such a program won't take effect in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until at least late 2024, six years after it was first announced.

Megan Randles, a political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said in a tweet that "the removal of billions of commonly littered items is never a bad thing" but called the new ban an overdue move and "still a drop in the ocean compared to the action that's needed to stem the plastic tide."

"We need system change at the source - reduction and reuse/refill targets, meaningful extended producer responsibility (so the polluters actually pay) and a deposit return scheme like so many European countries already have," she said.

Hyndside, of City to Sea, described the partial plastics ban as "minimum standards" and called on the government to go further by publishing a full strategy for tackling plastic pollution as a whole.

"We have to move away from all single-use kind of throwaway items," he said, "and try to encourage a more circular economy."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.uture generations."

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