It is estimated that in England we use 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers, and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds every year. These single-use plastics cause real devastation to the environment and the Government is committed to tackle this issue head on.
To tackle this unnecessary plastic pollution, from today, the Government's ban on plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds in England came into force. Please note that disabled people and those with medical conditions will be protected and will be able to request a plastic straw when visiting a pub or restaurant and purchase them from pharmacies.
This ban is just one part of the Government's landmark 25-year Environment Plan and builds upon other measures taken to reduce plastic pollution to protect our precious wildlife. These include:
- a world-leading ban on microbeads in cosmetic and personal care products;
- consulting on introducing a deposit return scheme to drive up the recycling of single-use drinks containers;
- committing to a ban on the export of polluting plastic waste to non-OECD states;
- promoting recycled materials as part of our fight against single-use plastic by introducing a new tax on plastic packaging that has less than 30% recycled content from April 2020; and,
- extending the single-use plastic carrier bag charge to all retailers and increasing it to 10p.
