European parliament approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics | Hacker News Reader

European parliament approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics

theguardian.com

21 pointsoptimusrex3 comments

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_... (the footnote of table 1 specifically)

[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[2]: 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-...

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com