
EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021 - johnshades
https://www.fastcompany.com/90326383/eu-to-ban-plastic-plates-cups-and-cutlery-by-2021
======
jwr
Reading these comments makes me sad, but I am also beginning to understand the
opposition to limiting carbon emissions.

Introduce an initiative that is "obviously good". I mean, none of the
commenters here will be disadvantaged by single-use plastic being banned. It
is obviously better for the environment. Whichever way you look at it, it is
an improvement on the current state of affairs. And yet, people will moan and
complain, criticize, pull out "statistics" out of thin air, say that this
"does not solve the real problem", that it isn't important. And this is the
enlightened HN community, the epitome of progressiveness.

This is similar to the climate change discussions. Moving away from fossil
fuels is obviously better for the environment and for us. And yet, people will
moan and complain, criticize, point fingers, say that it's the other guys who
pollute, or say that this particular change "doesn't matter", because there
are bigger polluters out there.

I am very glad the EU is making this move and I'm happy there are still _some_
places in the world who can effect change. I wish the EU was similarly radical
with respect to its beloved car industry, or with moving towards nuclear power
(not away from it), but one can hope.

~~~
vimy
>It is obviously better for the environment.

Except it isn't and plastic is for many uses the best material. Take glass for
example.

Cons of Glass:

It breaks

It costs more to ship

It is more expensive to recycle

Glass takes twice as much energy to produce

More pollution is created in the manufacturing, shipping and recycling of
glass

Glass creates more than 6 times the global warming gases than plastic

\-------------------

Cons of plastic: Litter (but people throw glass away too)

Some plastics can leach chemicals

Some plastics contain PVCs

~~~
Brakenshire
Unless I'm missing something, this seems spurious, what makes you think a ban
on single use plastic plates, cups, straws, coffee stirrers and cutlery means
people will use glass equivalents? Or rather, to make the comparison valid,
single use glass equivalents.

~~~
Mirioron
They won't. By and large, people will simply do without these products because
the equivalents will be too expensive for most people.

But he's just trying to explain that if people tried to stay at the same level
of quality of life then they'd have to switch to technology that isn't
advantageous to the environment.

------
patrickaljord
They're banning single use plastic only. Other plastic plates are not banned.
Given how much it costs in Europe to rent square meters to store stuff I
wonder if event companies won't just buy multiple-use plastic plates and just
throw them away anyway as it's cheaper than to pay personal to clean them,
transport them to containers and then rent the space to store them, secure
them etc.

~~~
blibble
this is exactly what happened with the previous ban

single use plastic bags were banned, so now instead people accumulate the more
dense multi-use bags under their kitchen sink instead

~~~
mijamo
This is false. Plastic use has been dramatically reduced by the previous law.
Source: Assessment of measures to reduce marine litter from single use
plastics, European Comission, 2018

------
sschueller
I'm going to keep saying it. The issue is trash disposal especially in third
world countries. You can't just pile trash on landfills.

I'm countries like Switzerland were most trash is incinerated to generate
electricity, getting rid of plastic bags has little impact if not increase
overall CO2 use since a alternate bag uses way more CO2 to be produced.

One stat stated that a woven bag would need to be used 7000 times to offset
the CO2 vs the amount of CO2 used to make a plastic bag.

~~~
Mirioron
If you look at the EU's own numbers on it they say that 150,000 tons of
plastic are tossed into European waters per year. Single use plastics make up
about half of that. This is less than 2% of the 8 million tons of plastic
tossed into the oceans worldwide.

We're basically trying to fix less than 1% of the problem with this.
Considering how much ire this is raising I'm not sure this is a good use of
the time of environmentalists.

~~~
thatoneuser
Sigh. And here's a reasonable criticism of this implementation and surprise
surprise - you're downvoted without anyone responding.

You're thinking rationally. Go for the most effective changes first. The low
hanging fruit. If that means plastic straws and forks then so be it. But it's
pretty hard to imagine this is the best path and it's a lot easier to think
it's just pencil pushing beurocrats coming up with _an_ idea to appear
progressive.

If there's data out there that shows this move will be significant then fine,
but at the rate these bans are going I see nothing but it exhausting what
momentum we have to improve our behavior.

~~~
NikkiA
They were likely downvoted because...

> 150,000 tons of plastic are tossed into European waters per year. Single use
> plastics make up about half of that

Regardless of the worldwide issue, the poster themselves states it's 50% of
the plastic in european waterways, why shouldn't europe care about reducing
50% ?!?

~~~
thatoneuser
Because 50% of very little isn't a big impact. Look into Asia and Africa for
plastic pollution. At the rate they produce Europe could literally be plastic
free and it would barely make an impact.

~~~
zilian
It s not with conservative thinking/ whataboutism that we re going to change
anything. We europeans are happy with this change. You also dont consider how
it make every citizen talk about it : it may spark better behavior about waste
everywhere, because why should I care if the power in place doesn't ?

------
normalperson
90% of the plastic in the ocean comes from Africa and Asia. First world
countries put their garbage, generally speaking, into garbage dumps.

This EU rule will do nothing.

~~~
throwaway5752
First, comments like yours is how nothing ever gets done.

Second, you use citation-free statistics that are misleading. How much plastic
waste from Asia is from "recycled" US and European ("first world", to use your
dog whistle) plastics?

edit: to repeat myself, _How much plastic waste from Asia is from "recycled"
US and European ("first world", to use your dog whistle) plastics?_ \- the
research that 90% of the plastic waste in the oceans comes from 10 rivers is
such common knowledge that the NY Post is one of the top hits if you search
for this. Plastic from those rivers comes from ostensibly "recycled" western
plastics, so this is actually _very_ meaningful policy from the EU.

~~~
Negitivefrags
> First, comments like yours is how nothing ever gets done.

The politician's fallacy, is a logical fallacy of the form:

1\. We must do something

2\. This is something

3\. Therefore, we must do this.

~~~
hjek
There's also the all-or-nothing fallacy, where you don't do anything because
it's not perfect.

------
progfix
Why no plastic bottles as well? The vast majority of plastic I use is from
bottles.

~~~
Brakenshire
Probably because there is a health implication there, the possibility that
people could get dehydrated and not have easy access to bottled water.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There are also substantial health implications to eliminating plastic cutlery,
cups, etc. We may be largely oblivious to it now and we may fail to see the
connection between the cutlery going and an uptick in illnesses after the
change.

The California bag ban slightly preceded the uptick in "medieval diseases" in
California, which has since spread from Southern California to other cities
(possibly by homeless people leaving California and taking their diseases with
them). The uptick in such infections is generally traced to lack of sanitation
among the homeless, but the idea that the bag ban is an element tends to get
dismissed because "we can't prove it, man!" basically.

I was still in California and still homeless when the bag ban was instituted.
Following the ban, my sons and I saw more homeless people digging through
trash cans, probably for free bags they could use for various purposes. I
never did it, but some homeless people use plastic bags as a toilet
substitute. They poop in a bag and take it to the nearest trash can rather
than poop on the sidewalk.

If you are digging bags out of a trash can to have a bag to poop in because
you no longer have ready access to free new ones and 10 cents per bag is a
financial hardship for you, well, it shouldn't shock anyone that there is an
uptick in disease.

But no one actually wants to believe that or take that possibility seriously
since no official health organization has announced that this is an issue.

Meanwhile, I have seen articles that suggest the CDC is actively downplaying
the uptick in diseases like hepatitis. They aren't aggressively issuing public
health warnings and putting this into the news. It's been slow to get press
and the problem gets downplayed as largely an issue for homeless people.

From what I have read, a lot of antibiotic resistant infections are bred in
third world countries with poor plumbing and the like, then inadvertently
exported via travelers. But, hey, the US and Europe can both readily get in on
the action by banning all the disposable items that help make modern life less
dangerous than life in a third world country. Let's go with that plan.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/medieval-
diseases...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/medieval-diseases-
flare-as-unsanitary-living-conditions-proliferate/)

~~~
happymellon
So the solution is public hygiene, like public toilets being available. Not
handing out plastic bags to poop in, wrapping poop in plastic is the worst
option.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I would love to see more public bathrooms that are well maintained and
genuinely accessible to the homeless. The public library is often the only
obvious source for a public bathroom available to absolutely anyone and
homeless people are frequently asked to leave the library for various reasons
and sometimes banned from it.

But way to go to completely miss the point. Disposable plastic bags have
myriad other uses, such as carting trash away from your camp or even carrying
some of your possessions when you can't currently afford a new bag and your
last one broke or whatever.

Pooping in plastic bags in just one use that homeless people have for free
plastic bags routinely acquired every time they purchase something. Every time
you eliminate one more free resource from the lives of the poorest of the
poor, it winds up being a hardship with myriad consequences.

~~~
jacobolus
If people need certain necessities to live, the way to help them best is not
to provide them a random assortment of free (subsidized) materials without
consideration of the negative side effects of the subsidy, but to directly
give them money.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I keep hearing that. It strikes me as a way to decide _now_ to screw people
over on _this_ specific detail on the theory that, someday, there will be UBI
and everything will work just fine.

 _Someday_ never seems to come on such promises.

I was openly homeless on Hacker News for 5.7 years. Plenty of people here are
UBI proponents who argued that I of all people should also be a UBI proponent
due to my poverty. Such people were not throwing money at me.

I'm old an cynical. If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here,
right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that
"someday" will ever come.

A lot of people on HN make quite good money and routinely espouse a lot of
high-minded ideals. You would think of all places, this would be one where
someone trying in earnest to make their life work via some kind of online
income would most find help to readily solve their financial problems and stop
being desperately poor.

I'm no longer homeless, but I still live on under $20k annually. I get treated
like a whiner with no real point for using myself as an example in these
discussions.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they usually aren't.

I'm incredibly skeptical of such arguments. People on HN expect good, well-
written content on the front page of HN all day, every day. They aggressively
use ad blockers, actively find ways around pay walls and routinely tell me
that writing doesn't deserve to make money and I should get a real job.

Writing is something I am capable of doing, in spite of my handicaps. I have
six years of college and I know a lot of stuff and I can be on a computer at
home and write.

If well-heeled, high-minded people who regularly come together in large
numbers on HN can't be arsed to help me stop being poor, then it seems really
extremely unlikely to me that the poor will ever get anything like UBI.

I'm not for UBI. I don't think it works. But, moreover, I don't think it will
really happen.

I think talk of UBI is like when so-called friends tell you that _if_ they win
the lottery, they will give you half of it. In reality, that's typically a
lie. It's an easy thing to say because winning the lottery is so very
unlikely.

People actually willing to help are willing to do whatever they can in the
here and now, no matter how small. But most of what I hear is promises of
_someday_ while I continue to flail and most people react to my flailing by
making me feel like I am doing something wrong. I'm an embarrassment. I'm
doing something socially inappropriate.

Perhaps I shall just go away at some point and leave HN to the well-heeled,
high-minded types who like to talk a good game and do nothing. Then I won't be
actively making them look like the hypocrites they so obviously are in most
cases.

I'm tired and trying to do some paid work. If I don't return to this
discussion, everyone here can just assume that's why.

~~~
jacobolus
Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic
needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy.

> _If you aren 't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help
> out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever
> come._

I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given
people blankets and cash before, and donated to charities focused on helping
the homeless, but it’s pretty hard as an individual to fully help someone who
has lots of problems to find all the help they need and get into a stable
comfortable situation, without making it a significant long-term project, and
taking on huge amounts of personal responsibility. This is frankly a better
job for publicly funded social workers, but I have a ton of admiration for any
private citizens willing to take it on.

Myself, I don’t have the spare attention or resources to drive someone to work
every day, talk to them every day to make sure they stay on track, put them up
in my house, hire them for a permanent job, etc. I have enough trouble just
taking care of myself and my own small children. My meager bits of help (one
meal, a blanket, a respectful conversation, lending someone a phone for a few
minutes, ...) might be appreciated but are hardly life changing.

Some of the homeless people I have talked to had trouble getting a job because
they didn’t have a regular place to shower, didn’t have clean unripped
clothes, etc., and then had trouble holding down a job once they got one
because they had substance abuse problems, didn’t have enough structure in
their lives to show up on time every shift, and so on. Of course the biggest
and most obvious problem was a lack of housing. Which I really have no fix
for. It’s a large-scale social problem which can best be tackled collectively.

~~~
Mirioron
I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these
types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people.
These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to _really_
help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the
problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high
ideals where you would expect X to be done, but it isn't. So if it's not even
done in a place like HN, then what's the chance that it will be done by the
general public? And so X gets brushed aside and the negative unintended
consequences pile up.

~~~
jacobolus
So your argument is something like “if any system or policy incidentally helps
the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is
immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now
cut off is politically intractable”?

This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal
power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it’s
impossible to support them except by continuing to hire them to mine coal.
When the people who want to eliminate coal power (e.g. Hillary Clinton’s
campaign in 2016) suggest cash transfers, reeducation plans, other industrial
investment, etc. to coal-mining regions to offset the loss of coal jobs, the
supporters of coal mining reject the proposals as politically infeasible.

Instead of setting up advocates for the homeless and environmentalists as
enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_So your argument_

They are not making an argument. They are trying to translate my words in
hopes of bridging some communication gap.

 _Instead of setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies,
it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions._

I'm an environmental studies major who gave up my car well before I became
homeless, in part for environmental reasons. (In the US, this is routinely
interpreted as "Obviously, you are just one of the useless and incompetent
poor, not qualified to do any well paid work" rather than "Obviously, you are
an extremist nutcase environmental enthusiast willing to walk the walk --
literally! -- not just talk the talk." Cuz: logic (by which I mean prejudice
and classism).)

So, I don't know why on earth you think I personally am setting up homeless
activists and environmentalists as enemies. I see myself as qualifying for
both labels.

------
goodJobWalrus
So what is the best replacement for fast food and takeaway purposes? Bamboo
cutlery?

~~~
incog-neato
Why not:

Fast food: metal cutlery at the restaurant that gets washed and reused.

Take away: your own cutlery at home.

~~~
amyjess
And what if you have motor control issues that makes it impossible to wash
cutlery to any standard of cleanliness?

I've said it before, and I've said it again: these anti-plastic laws are
actively hostile to people with disabilities.

~~~
tzs
That's interesting. I have no experience with motor control issues, so that
comes as a complete surprise to me.

Eating involves fine manipulation of the cutlery to load it with food, and
then hitting a relatively small target surrounded by things that you really
don't want to, say, stab with a fork if you miss that target.

I'd have expected that if one has good enough motor control for that, washing
cutlery in the sink or a dishwasher would not be a problem, as all the
movements required for washing seem to require less accuracy and consistency
than do those for eating with the cutlery.

So, clearly, I'm missing something about the mechanics of motor control. Is it
because almost all movements involve several different muscles, and so that if
one has different levels of control issue with different one that you can get
some movements are impossible even though they don't require much precision,
and others are possible, even with tight constraints, because even though they
involve the same body parts, they differ in the contribution required of each
muscle?

~~~
NoodleIncident
Running through it in my head, the largest hurdle seems to be the pinching
motion required to scrape off a blade or tines. I can imagine someone being
able to support a utensil from underneath, move it slowly in the right
direction, but not able to apply enough pressure to clean it. It might also be
harder to keep hold of a wet utensil in water, or it might be impossible to
bend over to fill and unload a dishwasher.

Of course, it could be as simple as just saying that you have to feed
yourself, but you don't have to do the dishes. Someone might be able to do 10
things a day, but not 20.

------
Luc
I've seen these reusable cups at festivals:
[https://www.ecocupshop.co.uk/en/](https://www.ecocupshop.co.uk/en/)

There's a 1€ deposit but some people keep the cup as a memento. Another side
effect is thieves breaking into the festival tent at night to steal the
plastic pipes containing dirty cups (so they can get the deposit for them).

~~~
jpindar
Those might make the high prices of drinks at some events less annoying since
you get a souvenir.

------
api
Like the bag ban in California this will probably just increase trash by
causing people to use bulkier disposables. Restaurants and such will replace
these with super-cheap glass or metal disposables that also consume more fuel
when shipped because they weigh more. Cheap paper alternatives are often from
pulp that is not sustainably sourced and in many cases they fall apart and so
are rejected by customers. These measures might be well intentioned but they
don't work and often backfire.

There is no way we're going to decrease oceanic plastic pollution without
sanctioning or otherwise pressuring the nations and industries that are
primarily responsible for it. For nations it's largely China, India, and a few
others. For industries fishing fleets are a disproportionate source, and most
of the culprits here are also not US or EU based.

~~~
drak0n1c
This is what I've seen happen here in Seattle. Every place just gives out
bulkier multiple use containers when anyone gets takeout salad or MealPal, and
people just throw them away as per usual. There's a Korean Deli all you can
fit in a box type restaurant that gives a $1 discount if you bring back your
own box, but that's the only place and they were doing it before the
regulations anyways.

Regulations can have unintended consequences.

No joke -- McDonalds is the most environmentally friendly takeout in Seattle.
The whole thing has been compostable recycled paper for a long time.

------
johnzim
Not that I'm especially surprised but the concept of subsidiarity isn't worth
much these days is it?

~~~
skrebbel
I'm strongly pro EU but at the same time sad that the subsidiarity principle
has become so weak. The EU can be better than this. Should be, has to be.

I mean I understand that you can't introduce a bill like the GDPR effectively
if every EU country does it differently. But plastic? Come on.

I support the gist of this ban by the way, yet agree with you that it has
nothing to do at the EU level.

------
joshuaheard
If you could build a machine that sterilized the utensils, shredded them, and
then 3d printed them. If the machine was the size of a microwave, and cost
under $200, you could make a fortune.

~~~
mips_avatar
People keep trying to do this. The problem is the grade of plastic is awful,
and 3d printing isn’t that fun/useful with bad filament.

~~~
joshuaheard
What about a small injection mold?

------
wtdata
Sincerely, the point is not of is actually going to reduce plastic in a big
enough scale to make a difference, the point is that it will make business
come up with alternatives and progress us towards a solution to plastic use
that can then be applied in a more extensive way.

The EU, although not bring perfect, is usually the place where these kind of
measures start, and I am grateful for it.

~~~
thatoneuser
I have a lot of doubt that removing a negative behavior from companies will
cause a positive one to pop up necessarily. It may, it may not. If they want
companies to come up with a solution why not offer a bounty for better tech?
At least then it's a primary motivator, while with bans there could be any
number of other responses.

------
ineedasername
What about single use made from bioplastics? Are they that much more
expensive?

~~~
danet
This still doesn't fix the problem, bioplastics would still take long time to
degrade, and they would need specific conditions to do so, we're just
offloading the problem to indefinite future and prefix 'bio-' in the name
makes us feel good about ourself.

For example PLA for 3D printers, technically bioplastic, but realistically it
still needs to be collected and when it comes to breaking it down, the process
is still pretty involved, and who is going to pay for all of that?

------
dfilppi
Start firing up the chainsaws to mow down the forests for paper plates.

------
vbuwivbiu
for the economics experts: how could the market eliminate this problem by
itself ?

~~~
habnds
It's a market failure that they're trying to correct. Externalities aren't
fixed by markets because they're external to those markets.

------
randyrand
Keep this up and the 2nd Brexit vote might never happen.

------
vimy
The western world is responsible for 1,25 % of all ocean plastic pollution.
Europe is only 0,28 %![0] There is no need to ban single-use plastics in the
West. It's just virtue signaling and the so-called 'solutions' lower our
comfort, will cause a rise in food poisoning deaths and are worse for the
environment.[1]

When you mention this, people reply we should set an example and other
countries will follow. The idea that Western countries should set an example
to teach those 'dumb countries that can't think for themselves' how to do
things seems very arrogant. And there are zero guarantees it will work. If it
was as easy as setting an example, every country on earth would be a
blossoming democracy by now...

[0]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611#f1](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611#f1)
[1]
[https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...](https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf)

Edit: An actual solution would be if the EU invested in waste management
solutions in the developing world.

People mention micro-plastics as a bad thing but we don't know that yet. So
far the level of evidence proving micro-plastics as harmful is on par with the
evidence linking cancer to cellphones.

~~~
Pfhreak
What if .5% is the biggest single chunk of plastic use you can eliminate in
your sphere of influence? Should you:

a) Do nothing, because it's "only" 0.5%

b) Eliminate 0.5% because it's something you can do.

> It's just virtue signaling and the so-called 'solutions' lower our comfort

Oh, right, I see. Yeah, I mean _you 'll_ be comfortable for the next thirty
years. Who cares about the next generation, am I right?

~~~
smileypete
There's a huge problem with unsorted or poor quality recyling or waste
electronics being illegally exported from first world countries [1] and ending
up in landfills or just dumped in piles, across the world, fix _that_ first,
_then_ move on to something else.

Banning tiny amount of single use plastic is low hanging but infinitesimally
small fruit however, and the narratives created around it just conveniently
distract from much bigger problems.

[1] [https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-tons-of-uk-
plastic-d...](https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-tons-of-uk-plastic-
dumped-across-world-11218595)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU)

~~~
Pfhreak
Why present it as an either or? Why fix one first? Do both.

~~~
smileypete
I'd not be surprised if the tonnage of illegal or substandard waste exported
from first world countries is 1,000,000 times greater the tonnage of
improperly disposed plastic straws, plates etc etc.

So why are the EU making a huge deal about the latter and not the former?
Sorry but it smacks of greenwashing and narratives to me...

