I often essay criticisms of the EU, in that they are forever looking for the next thing to 'fix'.
Today, it came out via ARD (Channel One, public TV, here in Germany), that a draft exists over a plan/law that would forbid the sales of plastic stirring sticks, and plastic straws. The ban would also cover plastic plates and plastic cutlery (knives, forks, spoons).
All of this would prevent plastic waste from getting into the ecosystem.
I sat and paused over this idea. In the case of straws, you could move onto paper straws. But with the plastic cutlery, it'll prove to be a problem. Most fast-food places aren't going to want to disperse real cutlery, and if you went to wood items.....well, you'd get the environmental folks all upset over cutting down more trees.
One can understand the positive nature of this 'fix' but the solution or next step makes this a bigger mess. Odds of this passing? I'd suggest 99-percent chance, and it'll probably happen by late summer, with an effective date of late 2019.
So, you might want to go out and buy a hundred boxes of plastic straws to cover the rest of your life.
3 comments:
This is one reason I dislike the EU: the nanny-state laws that try to restrict/prevent even the smallest of things, and how those same laws are imposed across all the member states. As much as I dislike littering and all the plastic waste that gets into the ecosystem, I also dislike laws that seek to prevent the entire sale of those same plastic products. Frankly, what should be done instead is proper education about the dangers of plastic waste entering the ecosystem and what can be done to prevent it.
If you sit and think about it.....once they outlaw the plastic straw....everyone will turn to the paper-straw. So what do you think happens in ten years? Too many paper straws are getting into the system? Then what?
To be fair, paper and (non-processed) wood are biodegradable unlike plastic or metal, not to mention there are efforts to introduce plant-based plastics to replace oil-based ones, so the situation in the future will be more or less different. Even so, if this law passes, I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be an influx of EU nationals fleeing to non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Norway, or Russia. It's times like this when I am happy for Britain to leave the EU. If you ask me, the EEC should not have become the EU, let alone expanded beyond the six founding members.
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