May pledges to scrap all plastic waste by 2042
BRITAIN’S Prime Minister Theresa May pledged on Thursday to eliminate avoidable plastic waste within 25 years, in an attempt to shift the focus away from her government’s divisions over Brexit to a more wide-ranging domestic agenda. In a speech on the environment, Mrs May announced plans to close the exemption that means retailers with fewer than 250 employees do not have to charge customers five pence for a single-use plastic bag. Avoidable plastic waste is a term used by industry to describe products including plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, soda and water bottles and most food packaging.
Mrs May also urged supermarkets to introduce plastic-free aisles where all the food is loose and announced a consultation on changes to the tax system to help reduce the use of other single-use plastic items.
“This truly is one of the great environmental scourges of our time,” Mrs May said. “In years to come, I think people will be shocked at how today we allow so much plastic to be produced needlessly.”
Mrs May said over one million birds and over 100,000 other sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste, while one in three fish caught in the English Channel contains pieces of plastic.
In 2015, Britain intro- duced a charge of five pence on all single-use plastic bags provided by large shops, which led to an 83 per cent reduction in UK plastic bags used in the first year.
Earlier this week, a ban on plastic microbeads used in cosmetics and personal care products came into force across Britain.
Worries about overuse of 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups each year have also been raised by campaigners, and the environmental audit committee last week called for a 25 pence “latte levy” to be charged on top of the price of a hot drink.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove showed he was ready to practise what he preached, by turning up for a Cabinet meeting clutching a reusable coffee mug earlier this week.