France Pushes Back Plastic Cup Ban By Four Years (straitstimes.com) 42
An anonymous reader shares a report: The French government on Dec 30 postponed a ban on plastic throwaway cups by four years to 2030 because of difficulties finding alternatives. The ban was meant to start on Jan 1. But the Ministry for Ecological Transition said the "technical feasibility of eliminating plastic from cups" following a review in 2025 justified pushing back the deadline.
It said in an official decree that a new review would be carried out in 2028 of "progress made in replacing single-use plastic cups." It added that the ban would now start Jan 1, 2030, when companies would have 12 months to get rid of their stock. France has gradually rolled out bans on single-use plastic products over the past decade as environmental campaigners have stepped up warnings about the impact on rivers and oceans.
It said in an official decree that a new review would be carried out in 2028 of "progress made in replacing single-use plastic cups." It added that the ban would now start Jan 1, 2030, when companies would have 12 months to get rid of their stock. France has gradually rolled out bans on single-use plastic products over the past decade as environmental campaigners have stepped up warnings about the impact on rivers and oceans.
Way to hold the line...not. (Score:3)
Re: Way to hold the line...not. (Score:3)
The content of your trash can may end up in an actual sea though, after some company is paid to take care of your trash and exports it to a country with less regulations. Not sure what point you are trying to make.
Need a job - Ministry for Ecological Transition (Score:3)
Prolonging the transition from plastic cups to not plastic cups by 4 more years will give France's Ministry for Ecological Transition's more years of spending 1.215 billion Euros on programs and their 1000+ employees.
https://www.ademe.fr/en/ademe-... [ademe.fr]
- ADEME has more than 1,000 employees
- ADEME expects €1.215 million in budgetary expenditure
The budget is roughly the same as building a 1 megawatt solar power plant every year in the US - https://coldwellenergy.com/how... [coldwellenergy.com] - "A 1MW (megawatt) solar farm can
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Billion or million?
Re:Way to hold the line...not. (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, all these declarative dates mean nothing with politicians.
You're wrong, but that's not entirely your fault, the summary is inaccurate. The plastic cups were already banned in France in 2020, following a EU Directive from 2019. Currently available are plastic-lined cardboard cups. From 2020 to 2024, 15% of plastic contents was allowed, then 8% since.
Those decisions rely not on politicians, but on technical reports established by agency staff, who are technically competent. The report that the government based its decision on, presents the different technologies and their maturity level. The report assesses that three techniques: polymer grafting, sol-gel coatings and cellulose microfiber coatings, are in advanced development and should reach market within 4 years, enabling the 2030 ban.
The report (pdf, 11 pages; in French): https://www.consultations-publ... [developpem...le.gouv.fr]
The PDF metadata says the report was written (or signed off) by "Jennifer Cosson", whose biography ( https://viadeo.journaldunet.co... [journaldunet.com] ) shows she owns a Master's degree in management of environmental risks, and occupied several positions of toxicology expert in particular for the the food safety agency before joining the ministry of Environment.
I would prefer a better outcome, but just dismissing by complaining about politicians is not supported by the facts. The minister made a decision based on a technical report that said earliest we can do is 2030.
Re: Way to hold the line...not. (Score:2)
Plastic straws were banned as well. We got these paper straws that got mushy if you left them too long in your drink. Shops offered steel straws that had to be cleaned. Years later, to my own surprise
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Some people can't imagine competent, non corrupt government. It shows how bad things are in their own countries.
Aznovoice (Score:2)
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Don't worry, it's just rsilvergun again (I think... but, isn't he always pro-Democrat?).
I hate single-use plastic (Score:3)
Re: I hate single-use plastic (Score:1)
Yes, single use items *are* more sanitary. This is why medical environments usually employ them. They obviously sterilize some things, but time was they'd also sterilize needles and syringes too. And they don't anymore now that cheap plastics make single use syringes economical.
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Re: I hate single-use plastic (Score:1)
I trust myself to do that. I don't trust the kid behind the counter working part time after school to do that each time for every customer. And neither do many boards of health that license restaurants.
Where I am, restaurants will eat the costs of making mistakes on takeout orders rather than accepting something back from a customer if it left their premises.
What's wrong with wax paper? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with waxed paper cups? They worked well enough for decades, and were mass manufactured in vast quantities. Why do we need polyethylene-coated paper cups or plastic cups? There's not really any big advantage to using plastics to line drinking cups, and a whole lot of obvious and significant disadvantages.
What they really mean is that there are no other options that provide the profit margins that the disposable cup manufacturers want.
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Re:What's wrong with wax paper? (Score:4, Informative)
Biodegradable plastic and plastic-coated cups are also subject to the EU ban. Plastic lining makes the cardboard difficult to recycle, and even at a sub-10% in mass, it's still microplastics if they go to the sea. Remember the biodegradable plastic bags we have for some years (that broken into pieces on their own after a few months), that we hoped would solve the turtle-choking problem. They were banned as well in the end, because even biodegradable means a whole lot of harmful microplastics during the degradation length of time.
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Bags broke down into microplastic, but the biodegradable plastic cups were worse. Turns out they were only biodegradable in certain conditions. Typically at higher pressure and temperature in an industrial digestor. Turns out they didn't biodegrade on their own at all.
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Economics. Sadly, plastic straws and cups are cheaper to manufacture than their wax paper equivalents.
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But the plastic straws were effectively banned despite (according to your explanation) being cheaper to manufacture. Differences are: 1) coffee cups are exposed to boiling-hot water while paper straws only experience cold beverages, so the coffee cup would degrade much faster; 2) a failing straw (becoming too soft due to contact with mouth or the beverage) can easily be replaced by a new one; while a coffee cup that fails is not acceptable at all as a product.
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Your theory doesn't explain why, if the waxed cups (coated with unmodified natural polymers, outside of the scope of the EU ban) were possible to manufacture at scale, the companies who make them were not lobbying to keep the ban for next week and make a fortune.
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The restaurant industry out-weighs the wax paper industry, generally speaking.
Plastic cups are cheap, stupidly so. Coating paper and folding it is far more expensive than basically heating up plastic and shaping it into a cup. The former requires us
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You could have misread something. The stupidly cheap plastic cups were already banned 5 years ago, and France and the EU have been using the coated and folded paper cups for this whole time, the same you are arguing are too expensive! The thing that happened today is the cup industry is allowed to temporarily continue producing the waxed and folded paper cups instead of phasing out the wax entirely, because the paper industry hasn't yet readied pure paper solutions that can handle coffee temperatures; but t
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Re: I know I know! (Score:1)
Hand-made by slaves!
Necessary reality check (Score:2)
In other words:
We've explored all options and have found no viable alternatives. Let's review the market again in a couple years time and see if any new replacement technologies would come up in the meantime. If not, we'll push the deadline/review again, on a loop.
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We've explored all options and have found no viable alternatives.
The drive-thru window and Door Dash is the only place this is a real problem. Any other situation where you are actually entering the establishment presents an opportunity for you to use normal durable drink-ware that is washed and reused, whether eating dine-in or just using it to pour from their container into your own (which would bypass any "sanitation" concerns most businesses cite). Businesses just don't like this because it creates extra labor costs on their side that they can't effectively automate
Re: Necessary reality check (Score:3)
You seem to completely ignore the fact that most disposable cups are used when people take drinks out, on the go. 99.99% of people just want to down a drink and dispose of the cup. Carrying a reusable cup (which takes significant space) is not something most people would do or want.
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99.99% of people just want to down a drink and dispose of the cup. Carrying a reusable cup (which takes significant space) is not something most people would do or want.
Too bad, so sad? Environmental problems are something that will require changes in behavior from the general population. I'm not talking hippy-drippy levels of change here where we all start sewing our own clothes, ride bicycles everywhere, and grow all our own vegetables in our background gardens here, I just mean changes where we start using more durable goods and washing dishes comes back as a position at many restaurants.
Carrying a reusable cup (which takes significant space) is not something most people would do or want.
One of the biggest trendy things of 2024 was literally that -- Stanley cups. For 20
Re: Necessary reality check (Score:2)
You're missing the point.
Yes, there are people who do use flasks but it's for practical reasons in their particular use case. They want to take more volume with them so that they don't have to refill or reheat the liquid many times throughout the day. The most important part of their use case, however, is that they have somewhere to stash that flask while they're not drinking - an office, a nook on a construction site, etc.
The use case I am talking about is "I need a coffee on the go". You're in a shopping
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Yes, there are people who do use flasks but it's for practical reasons in their particular use case. They want to take more volume with them so that they don't have to refill or reheat the liquid many times throughout the day.
Empty point. All beverages containers are for practical reasons. Even disposable ones. The reason being you want more to drink than you can fit in your mouth at once. You don't have to carry a huge Stanley cup or a 1 liter hydroflask. People buy 12 oz cans or soda and 8 oz cans of V8 vegetable juice to stick in their lunch box. In those cases we have cans that are recyclable, but you can use a reusable container for the same thing just as easily. The reason always comes down to laziness -- measuring portion
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We're talking about cups. Stop throwing any and every other green replacement at me (like bags or forks) and focus on the cups, please.
I'm an ordinarly Joe who buys coffees on the go. I like a large mocha which is 20 fl oz (568ml). I buy them in all sorts of everyday situations: while walking around a shopping centre, on a casual walk around where I live, sometimes at a random stand at a local tram station. There is no absolutely way for me to predict where and when I'm going to need a vessel for a coffee.
Re: Necessary reality check (Score:2)
Also, the surcharge cup doesn't work. One - same carry-with-me problem. Two, people will just absorb the fee and dump the more durable, even more unrecyclable cup in the bin anyway.
What environmental problem are they solving? (Score:3)
Fossil fuel consumption - again a 0.7g fork consume an insignificant amount of fossil fuel compared to my trip to the restaurant
CO2 emissions - I'm not really sure if their are any and they would be dwarfed by the emissions from my burger.
Litter and micro plastics - That's a culture problem that could be solved by other means. Where I live the main sources of plastic in the environment are tire wear, washing machine waste water and litter from my city garbage collection.
These laws seem like pure virtue signaling. If you want to prevent some negative externality tax it directly, don't tell people what they can or can't do.
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle (Score:2)
Recycle is a scam and an excuse to not reduce and reuse. Most recyclables wind up in African and asian countries on their path to the oceans. The point is to reduce consumption and have a reusable and repairable market. Of course there is no suitable alternative to single use cups. The point is to get rid of single use cups and move to reusable cups, everywhere. Let consumers bring their own.
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Just pour the coffee in to my cupped hands.
survival (Score:2)
I wonder how the world ever survived without those cups. Life must have been just awful in the 50s.