EU to ban plastic products by 2021 in member states – UPDATE
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The Ministry of Innovation and Technology aims to forbid the usage of single-use plastic bottles and other plastic carrier bags made out of a certain plastic material that degrades with oxidation, from next January on.
Daily News Hungary reported before that the use of a range of single-use plastic products would be banned from next January under a bill tabled to parliament by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology on Wednesday. Other news portals reported the details of this decision shortly after it was announced.
Index reported that the new law about banning plastic products in the country is based on another one announced in February which aims to protect the climate and the natural environment and contains several steps about the possible methods and techniques.
While PM Orbán and the government would like to delay the action plans of protecting the environment, the European Union urges them from the other side.
The law would include popular plastic products people only use once, like plates, bottles, straws, q-tips, and other plastics which degrade through oxidation. In the EU, countries would face stricter laws than the states which are not part of the Union and would not have the opportunity to use light and very light plastic products like carrier bags from January 1, 2021.
The EU suggests to companies and factories which produce these plastic products to come up with alternatives in the future. The government, therefore, would provide 13 million EUR/year to change their technologies, expand the factories, and increase capacity.
The European Union decided to come up with this suggestion as well as an early introduction as recent studies shockingly revealed that 85% of the pollution in European seas and on their shores is plastic, which is 75% of all kinds of pollution and garbage in the seas of the continent. As part of the decision, campaigns and effective communication need to advertise the reason why the EU decided to ban plastic products.
The newly produced products need to have descriptions in the future about how much plastic material they contain, how they should be properly thrown away, and all the negative effects they have on nature.
Along with banning, collecting and completely recycling all the plastic products of the EU by 2025 is also an essential part of this project. All EU states are obligated to collect 90% of plastic products – especially bottles – by the end of this year.