7 ms·

European parliament approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics

21 points by optimusrex 8y ago

kevin_b_er 8y ago
Looking at it, I wonder how medical waste is handled. Single use plastics are pretty common there, and they're considered bio-hazardous waste after. I'd call plastic tubing and bags to be single-use plastic. There's no apparently exception for them in my brief reading of the directive.
- Someone 8y ago
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181005STO15110/plastic-in-the-ocean-the-facts-effects-and-new-eu-rules http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/2018... says: ”A total ban is proposed for single-use plastic items for which alternatives in other materials are already readily available: cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks. MEPs also added oxo-degradable plastic products and fast food containers made out of polystyrene to the list. For the rest, a range of other measures is proposed: - Consumption reduction targets of 25% by 2025 for food containers and 50% by 2025 for cigarette filters containing plastic - Obligations for producers of items such as wrappers, cigarette filters, wet wipes etcetera to cover the costs of waste-management and clean-up (so called extended producer responsibility) - Collection target of 90% by 2025 for drink bottles (for example through deposit refund systems) - Labelling requirements for sanitary towels, wet wipes and balloons to alert users to their correct disposal - Awareness-raising For fishing gear, which accounts for 27% of sea litter, producers would need to cover the costs of waste management from port reception facilities. EU countries should also collect at least 50% of lost fishing gear per year and recycle 15% of it by 2025.” ⇒ I don’t think medical waste falls under this change.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tomatotomato37 8y ago
Fun statistics & math: 2010 total plastic marine debris[0]: 4,800k - 12,700k metric tons 2010 EU plastic marine debris[0]: 50k-120k metric tons (Higher than the US by ~1k) 2010 EU plastic marine debris percentage[0]: 1% 2016 EU export of nontoxic garbage to a country in top 10 plastic marine waste[2]: 269,000 tonnes (a lot missing statistics so wide error bars here) 2015 percent of nontoxic garbage export that is plastic/mixed[1]: ~9% Hours wasted digging through overly verbose pdfs and mislabled charts: Too many Probable amount of EU plastic that gets exported to top 10 country: 26.9k - 53.8k tonnes Crude adjusted EU ranking if 100% of the doubled amount makes it into the ocean: ~10th Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% Other stupid things learned: Netherlands imports hilarious amounts of garbage [3] [0]: https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_... (the footnote of table 1 specifically) [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics_based_on_the_European_list_of_waste_codes#Non-hazardous_notified_waste_based_on_LoW https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2]: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do (You'll have to screw with the customizations to get useful statistics) [3]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-shipments https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-...

21 points by optimusrex 8y ago

Looking at it, I wonder how medical waste is handled. Single use plastics are pretty common there, and they're considered bio-hazardous waste after. I'd call plastic tubing and bags to be single-use plastic. There's no apparently exception for them in my brief reading of the directive.

Someone 8y ago
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181005STO15110/plastic-in-the-ocean-the-facts-effects-and-new-eu-rules http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/2018... says: ”A total ban is proposed for single-use plastic items for which alternatives in other materials are already readily available: cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks. MEPs also added oxo-degradable plastic products and fast food containers made out of polystyrene to the list. For the rest, a range of other measures is proposed: - Consumption reduction targets of 25% by 2025 for food containers and 50% by 2025 for cigarette filters containing plastic - Obligations for producers of items such as wrappers, cigarette filters, wet wipes etcetera to cover the costs of waste-management and clean-up (so called extended producer responsibility) - Collection target of 90% by 2025 for drink bottles (for example through deposit refund systems) - Labelling requirements for sanitary towels, wet wipes and balloons to alert users to their correct disposal - Awareness-raising For fishing gear, which accounts for 27% of sea litter, producers would need to cover the costs of waste management from port reception facilities. EU countries should also collect at least 50% of lost fishing gear per year and recycle 15% of it by 2025.” ⇒ I don’t think medical waste falls under this change.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tomatotomato37 8y ago

Fun statistics & math: 2010 total plastic marine debris[0]: 4,800k - 12,700k metric tons 2010 EU plastic marine debris[0]: 50k-120k metric tons (Higher than the US by ~1k) 2010 EU plastic marine debris percentage[0]: 1% 2016 EU export of nontoxic garbage to a country in top 10 plastic marine waste[2]: 269,000 tonnes (a lot missing statistics so wide error bars here) 2015 percent of nontoxic garbage export that is plastic/mixed[1]: ~9% Hours wasted digging through overly verbose pdfs and mislabled charts: Too many Probable amount of EU plastic that gets exported to top 10 country: 26.9k - 53.8k tonnes Crude adjusted EU ranking if 100% of the doubled amount makes it into the ocean: ~10th Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% Other stupid things learned: Netherlands imports hilarious amounts of garbage [3] [0]: https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_... (the footnote of table 1 specifically) [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics_based_on_the_European_list_of_waste_codes#Non-hazardous_notified_waste_based_on_LoW https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2]: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do (You'll have to screw with the customizations to get useful statistics) [3]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-shipments https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-...