ROME: The European Parliament in Strasbourg has decided to limit the number of disposable bags per inhabitant to 90 bags per year by 2019. By 2025, that number should dwindle down to 40 per year.
According to the European Commission, a European citizen uses some 200 plastic disposable bags per year on average, which results in some 100 billion plastic bags per year in total. 90 % of those are handed out by supermarkets during shopping sprees and while 8 billion bags end up at a landfill, an equal number gets dumped in nature, filling up waterways and oceans. The degradation process for one single bag takes up 10 to 30 years.
The European Parliament will now fight these environmentally unfriendly disposable bags. It has issued target numbers, but it is up to the member states how to reach these targets: they can enforce a price for each bag, starting in 2018 or they can take other measures to drastically limit their use (enforce the use of reusable bags for example).
Averaging 98 bags per inhabitant, Belgium performs relatively well. “Progressive countries, like Belgium, have shown that adding a price tag to the plastic bags will drastically limit their use”, Bart Staes (MEP for Groen) said. “Voluntary efforts from the Belgian supermarket chains have helped limit their use 80 % in Flanders and 60 % in Wallonia. In 2011, Belgians used 100 disposable bags per person per year in 2011, half of the European average. This is a clear example of getting the polluter to pay.”
His liberal colleague Philippe De Backer “we all benefit from the stricter regulations Europe now gives its member states. Our waste will shrink and it will not cost the tax payer as much to get waste collected and processed.” That is why he has asked “clothes stores to consider how they can replace their plastic bags with something else”.
Bas Eickhout (MEP for the Dutch GroenLinks) is very happy that Europe “has finally taken action against the plastic soup in our oceans. Every year, millions of sea creatures die because of plastic in their stomach.
Now that Europe will no longer had out these plastic bags for free, we can help prevent such things from happening.” Wilma Mansveld (State Secretary for the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) is even considering an all-out ban on free plastic disposable bags starting in 2016.
Trade organizations are hesitant about that ban: “It is a measure that will mainly target stores and consumers. Pretty much every entrepreneur gives the customer a bag to safely carry his purchase. The idea to get customers to shop with their own big-bag is not very realistic”, NVER CEO Martin de Wilde said. He advocates other solutions: “If there is no other way, we could sell the disposable plastic bag for a symbolic 0.01 euro for example.”