France Pushes Back Plastic Cup Ban By Four Years (straitstimes.com)
- Reference: 0180487421
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/30/1711255/france-pushes-back-plastic-cup-ban-by-four-years
- Source link: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/france-pushes-back-plastic-cup-ban-by-four-years
> The French government on Dec 30 [1]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.
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> 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.
[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/france-pushes-back-plastic-cup-ban-by-four-years
Aznovoice (Score:2)
How will they do their Charles Aznavour impressions
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, it's just rsilvergun again (I think... but, isn't he always pro-Democrat?).
I hate single-use plastic (Score:2)
I always have steel water bottles with me. Try to actually get a restaurant to fill them though, and they claim it's unsanitary and they'll refuse nine out of 10 times. So, it's clearly not just a money issue.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, a syringe or an IV bag is different than a water bottle. In the cast of the bottle, just don't touch it to the tap and it's fine.
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:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
An excellent question. Paper is at least theoretically biodegradable (it is amazing how long paper can survive in the anerobic environment of the typical dump). Or just use glass and wash or recycle them. There are even biodegradable plastics that could be used, they are merely expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
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 degr
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Economics. Sadly, plastic straws and cups are cheaper to manufacture than their wax paper equivalents.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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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> 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.
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
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
What environmental problem are they solving? (Score:2)
Landfill space - Single use plastic takes up negligible space in a land file
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
Way to hold the line...not. (Score:2)
As usual, all these declarative dates mean nothing with politicians. Good luck to the next generation swimming in a sea of single use plastic piling up everywhere.
Need a job - Ministry for Ecological Transition (Score:2)
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.
[1]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 - [2]https://coldwellenergy.com/how... [coldwellenergy.com] - "A 1MW (megawatt) solar farm can
[1] https://www.ademe.fr/en/ademe-the-french-ecological-transition-agency/our-organisation/
[2] https://coldwellenergy.com/how-much-investment-do-you-need-for-a-solar-farm/
Re: (Score:3)
> 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
Re: Way to hold the line...not. (Score:2)
Personally I get why politicians dare to make such bold claims. You have to be ambitious. Take a step in the dark to get us up from our lazy asses. I remember the whole RoHs struggle. It was messy in the beginning. Plenty of people shouted that it was not possible to go lead free, but it turned out pretty ok.
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