SA in talks to ditch plastic straws

The department of environmental affairs is currently engaging industry and consumer bodies on proposals to phase out or completely ban plastic products such as straws and microbeads, reports Northglen News.

Mark Gordon, the department’s deputy director-general for chemical and waste management, said the single-use products are considered to be unfriendly to the environment, especially the marine sector.

Gordon was briefing the department on the banning of single-use plastics on Wednesday.

ALSO READ: Cigarette butt pollution far worse than plastic straws

He said single-use plastic products like earbuds, straws, stirrers, plastics like table cups, tableware, and polystyrene packaging “have a very short lifespan and becoming a real problem in the environment”.

He added that there have been heightened consumer awareness campaigns that are aimed at encouraging members of the public to refuse the straw.

This includes programmes like “the last straw”, “ditch the straw”, and “refuse the straw”. Gordon said a lot of restaurant chains have stopped giving out straws to patrons completely, or opt for paper straws.

He said whenever the department does beach clean-ups, earbuds and plastic stirrers were high up on the list of the pollution found, and added that these posed a great danger to marine species. These factors have prompted the department to prioritise the issue of single-use plastic.

“We have identified those five as the priority products that we need to address and we are doing this in a matrix where we look at these products – what are the compostable alternative availability, the cost of the alternative, the market readiness in terms of availability in South Africa – and we are really quantifying every aspect of this to look at its market readiness,” he explained.

Gordon also said that the department was working with the department of health and the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to look at the phasing out of microbeads in cosmetics.

Alternatives to plastic straws include paper straws and metal straws, which can be purchased online, and are available at eco-friendly shopping outlets. For more information and facts on how detrimental single-use plastic is to the environment, read up on the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

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