European Union moves to ban single-use plastics

If you have just been given a straw with your drink, we hope you sent it back.  Or, that the straw is made of steel or bamboo.  Because plastic straws are terrible for the environment and thousands of them are used daily.

The European Commission has proposed a ban on all single use plastic products and that would include single use plastic straws.  A straw gets used once, for your drink or cocktail, and lands up in the ocean.   Fish eat it, fish die from it, and the damage caused is huge.

In an effort to reduce all marine matter, the EU are also trying to get people to use fewer plastic drinking bottles and to ban all single-use plastic drinking bottles by 2025.  Think about how many bottles of water you might buy every week? And then multiply that by hundreds of thousands.  We are throwing plastic away every single day, and we need to find alternatives.

Plastic waste does not only land up in the ocean.  It lands up on your dinner plate, when you eat fish.  You have no idea anymore what you are consuming and how dangerous sit is.  It also lands up in our soil and in the air, and is highly toxic.

Scientific Reports say there is a garbage patch floating around the Pacific Ocean that consists of 79,000 tonnes of plastic.  It is estimated to have 1.8 trillion individual pieces of plastic in it - and your drinking straws, plastic bags and coffee cups may be part of it.

Every single person on the planet needs to make a huge effort to stop using plastic and to at least recycle the plastic that they do use.  There is no need to use a plastic straw.  It’s pretty easy to drink out the glass. And you can easily put your shopping in a re-usable and recyclable bag.