European legis­la­tion on plastic bags paves way for com­postable shop­ping bags

European Bioplastics wel­comes the strong envir­on­ment­al com­mit­ment of Green MEP Mar­grete Auken, the European Parliament’s lead nego­ti­at­or for the legis­la­tion. Com­ment­ing on the bind­ing EU rules on redu­cing plastic bag use, Ms Auken stated ​“EU mem­ber states will have to take action to reduce plastic bag use but they will be able to choose how to do it: either they intro­duce pri­cing for plastic bags or equally effect­ive meas­ures, or they deliv­er on ambi­tious reduc­tion tar­gets.” The pro­pos­al adop­ted expli­citly pushes decision mak­ing to the loc­al mem­ber state level, where decisions can best be made con­sist­ent with loc­al infra­struc­ture, prac­tices, and mar­kets. ​“This is cru­cial, because it ret­ro­act­ively leg­al­izes nation­al legis­la­tion of Mem­ber States like Italy and France. Both states have recog­nized the bene­fits that are achiev­able with bio­de­grad­able and com­postable shop­ping bags,” said François de Bie, Chair­man of European Bioplastics. ​“These coun­tries are pion­eers in put­ting the decis­ive eco­lo­gic­al advant­ages of such bags to good use. This means enhan­cing the sep­ar­ate col­lec­tion of biowaste and thereby divert­ing it from land­fill.” In this con­text, European Bioplastics also highly appre­ci­ates the endorse­ment of the EN13432 as the stand­ard to cer­ti­fy bio­de­grad­a­tion and the ini­ti­at­ive to fur­ther improve bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity and com­posta­bil­ity labelling for plastic car­ri­er bags. Describ­ing ​‘oxo-bio­de­grad­able’ plastic bags as ​“hugely prob­lem­at­ic”, MEP Auken explained ​“these plastic bags worsen the lit­ter prob­lem by frag­ment­ing into micro-plastics pol­lut­ing the envir­on­ment and hinder­ing com­post­ing and recyc­ling”. European Bioplastics shares the view of Mar­grete Auken con­cern­ing the missed chance of ban­ning the oxo-degrad­able plastics. ​“This would have sent a clear sig­nal that bags should not be placed on the mar­ket with mis­lead­ing claims about bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity,” de Bie argued. ​“On the oth­er hand, it will only be a mat­ter of time,” he is con­vinced, refer­ring to the require­ment of the Com­mis­sion to present a report to the European Par­lia­ment and Coun­cil, examin­ing the impact of the use of oxo-degrad­able bags on the envir­on­ment. ​“The report will clearly show that oxo-degrad­able plastics are not bio­de­grad­able and hence do not qual­i­fy as an eco­lo­gic­al solu­tion,” de Bie con­cluded. Source: European Bioplastics e.V.