Now EU joins Mail’s drive to tackle the plastic menace

NATIONS across Europe joined Britain and Theresa May last night to turn the tide on plastic.

The EU published a strategy to clamp down on throwaway plastic including bottles, straws, coffee cups and cutlery.

It mirrors the PM’s plan to banish avoidable plastic within 25 years. As the fight against plastic pollution gained momentum:

n Mrs May backed supermarket Iceland’s decision to stop using plastic packaging on own-label products within five years;

n The PM and Environment Secretary Michael Gove urged other retailers to follow suit;

n Waitrose pledged to replace difficult-to-recycle black plastic trays used for fresh produce, meat and fish by the end of the year; n banish McDonald’s Morrisons, chain will plastic come Wagamama Waitrose straws; from recycled said and they restaurant will n said all its packaging or renewable sources by 2025. Mail’s In another campaign, Turn The boost Tide the for the Cabinet On Daily Plastic threw to ditch its weight throwaway behind coffee efforts cups. Each minister was handed a reusable cup as they left Downing Street yesterday.

The PM has praised the Mail’s ten-year campaign to reduce plastic pollution, from calling for a 5p charge on bags to backing moves to outlaw microbeads, cut throwaway coffee cups and bring in a bottle deposit scheme.

Yesterday European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans said the EU would clamp down on ‘singleuse plastics that take five seconds to produce, you use it for five minutes and it takes 500 years to break down again’. He said: ‘We are going to choke on plastic if we don’t do anything about this. ‘How many millions of straws do we use every day across Europe? I would have people not use plastic straws any more.’ The EU will fund research into alternative packaging and assess ways to tax single-use plastics – something the UK is already looking at.

Iceland – the first supermarket in the world to remove plastic packaging from ownlabel products – will begin by replacing black plastic ready meal trays with alternatives made from wood pulp.

Black plastic is a top priority as it is difficult to recycle and infrared sensors in recycling plants struggle to pick it up, meaning vast quantities end up burned or in landfill.

Mrs May’s spokesman said the PM had welcomed Iceland’s move, adding: ‘The Prime Minister said that this was a good start, but there was much more to do and we want others to now follow suit.’

Mr Gove told the supermarket’s boss he would urge others to follow its example.

Campaign group A Plastic Planet has been lobbying supermarkets to introduce plastic-free aisles. Co-founder Sian Sutherland said: ‘ We hope that the big brands will follow Iceland’s lead here. This is just the beginning.’

However, the British Plastics Federation said: ‘Plastic packaging is used because it vastly reduces food waste and is resource efficient. If Iceland implement these measures, there is a risk that the weight of the packaging, carbon emissions, food waste and the amount of energy to make that packaging will increase.’

YOU will go on voting until you give us the

result we want. Such was yesterday’s message from the leaders of the EU bloc, as they urged Britain to change its mind about Brexit.

They didn’t put it so bluntly, of course. Instead, European Council president Donald Tusk cooed disingenuously: ‘ Our hearts are still open for you’, while Commission president Jean- Claude Juncker said the ‘door’ remained open.

But ‘hearts’ or ‘door’, their meaning was the same. Desperately worried about how they will make ends meet without UK taxpayers to pick up their bills, both are pressing for a second referendum in which they hope voters will reverse the historic decision of June 2016.

It’s a tactic the anti-democratic EU has deployed repeatedly in the past, refusing to take No for an answer when voters in Denmark, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Greece turned against Brussels at the ballot box.

But if they believe the UK will meekly knuckle under, like all the rest, they seriously underestimate the British. For except among the most ardent of Remoaners, for whom the European superstate is almost a religion, there is no public appetite whatsoever for a second vote.

On the contrary, the prevailing mood is that we should get on with striking an exit deal, while planning for a future in charge of our own money, laws, borders and trade arrangements with the wider world.

This is the message the Government should be ramming home to the EU. So how depressing that confusion hangs over the Cabinet’s aims, with some ministers seemingly agitating for the softest of soft Brexits – membership in all but name. Meanwhile only a few, such as Boris Johnson, emphatically demand the full independence the country voted for.

While the uncertainty lasts, is it any wonder Brussels harbours false hopes that Brexit may never happen?

To her credit, Theresa May has insisted the decision to pull out of the EU – along with its single market and customs union – is irreversible. She and her ministers must keep spelling that out, with one voice, until the message gets through to the likes of Messrs Tusk and Juncker.

Only then will they get serious about negotiating a deal to suit everyone.