Plastic Free July was a complete failure in Hungary

More and more people know about the damaging effect of plastic waste to nature. However, the initiative of Plastic Free July was not successful in Budapest at all, RTL News reported. Moreover, there was 150 tons more plastic waste generated than in June, before the challenge.

The initiative of 2011 has become global today. The purpose of the action was to make households produce less plastic. It was not successful in Budapest, though. 1362 tons of plastic waste was produced in the capital, which is more than the amount of the previous month (1212 tons) and last year’s July (1329 tons), based on the data of FKF (private Ltd. of public space maintenance in Budapest).

The estimated number of plastic bags produced in the world per second is 160,000, but we only use them for 20-25 minutes. The natural decomposition of them takes hundreds of years, though. 

The majority of plastic waste gets into rivers and seas. Youngsters also know about the consequences. Some of them joined the action and avoided supermarkets that produce too much unnecessary plastic packages and bags, according to the report of RTL News. 

Last year, Greenpeace started collecting signatures to ban the use of disposable plastic bags. The ministry in question has also created a draft bill, but the parliament voted against it. The number of signatures is above 200,000; therefore, associates of the world organisation will soon turn to the ministry again, which has promised to create another draft bill, including the needs of all the sectors concerned.

Gergely Gulyás (Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office) says that the government is waiting for the regulation changes of the European Union regarding this issue.

“We should not perform anything before knowing what these changes are exactly.”  

The EU has already made a decision – the use of disposable plastic tools is going to be banned from 2021. France and Romania have already prohibited the use of disposable plastic. Slovakia plans to wait until 2021. Germany and Serbia are preparing for the prohibition as soon as possible.