The European Commission has proposed new rules to ban certain plastic products in order to reduce the waste filling our oceans, it announced Monday.
The EU's measures tackle the top 10 plastic products that wash up on Europe's beaches and fill its seas, including a ban on the private use of single-use plastics like plastic straws, plates and utensils and containers used for fast food or your daily takeaway coffee.
The measures would also have each country in the EU come up with a system that would collect 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2025.
"The proposed ban in the European Union of single use plastics, notably plastic straws and cotton buds, is welcome and very promising news," said Dr. Paul Harvey from Macquarie University in a press release. "Single use plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of this generation."
You can see why the EU is making the proposal. Single-use plastic objects and fishing gear account for 70 percent of waste in the ocean, according to the EU. In 2017, researchers found 38 million pieces of plastic waste on an uninhabited South Pacific island. Figures from the same year showed that a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute, a number predicted to jump 20 percent by 2021.
Fortunately, others are tackling the plastic problem, including scientists and environmentalists who've come up with one solution involving mushrooms that can eat plastic.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @04:19PM (2 children)
Back in the day, I worked at Future shop (basically a Best Buy). I sold discmans. When I started, they would be sold in cardboard boxes. They would be a box with a cardboard sleeve that slipped over it. It was nice. Unboxing them was satisfying.
By the time I left, pretty much everything was in those blister packages. I've cut my hands pretty badly at least twice trying to open those things.
From a merchant perspective, they are way better though. You can hang them on a hook. They are difficult to open, which reduces 'shrinkage' (theft). The packages don't get wrecked over time (the cardboard boxes would look worse the more they got handled).
I would love a return to cardboard boxes for electronics. It's a much more satisfying unboxing experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:56PM (1 child)
What is an unboxing experience? Is that like opening up a birthday present?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:53AM
film some boxers. Run the film backwards?