Wales is about to become the first UK nation to ban single use plastics

The Welsh Government has announced that they will be the first part of the UK to ban single use products.

The list of products that is being banned or restricted are

• Cutlery
• Plates
• Stirrers
• Drinking straws (with an exemption for people who need straws to live independently)
• Plastic-stemmed cotton buds
• Balloon sticks
• Expanded and foamed extruded polystyrene fast-food containers
• Expanded and foamed extruded polystyrene cups
• Polystyrene lids for all cups and fast-food containers
• Thin plastic single-use carrier bags (with exemptions e.g. for food hygiene)
• All products made of oxo-degradable plastic.

Does The Pure Option support this ban?

This is one of those complex question as we have been here before, on the surface we are supportive of this ban, but our concern is this could be another well meaning but poorly implemented plan like the UK Governments plastic tax, which actually taxes the solution and just recycles the problem.

Never forget that recycling is just recycling a problem but the simple solution is to just remove the problem with something nature based.

The direction of travel of the UK Government has actually driven away investment away from the UK.

The UK was until the plastic tax a world leader in this area, and now as far as we are aware we are the last British owned plant based packaging company left, so it's hard to be optimistic when we are were widely supportive of the UK plastic tax ( we even contributed to the gathering of evidence, which they completely ignored) and then they throw a hand grenade into the mix by trying to force us to add recycled plastic to our products ( which isn't going to happen).

So we do support this ban, but we are cautious as there is very little mentioned about whether plant based materials are included in this ban, and from our experience if plant based materials aren't mentioned that's a bad sign.

What would The Pure Option like to see happen?

We want to see Wales bring in a home collection system that composts plant based materials and we want these to be seen as a part of our waste management in the future ( currently you can't put our products into a food waste collection.

We would like to see the Welsh Government see fossil based plastics as a legacy problem with a plan to remove our reliance on petrol based plastics.

So is it all doom and gloom?

In spite of legislational attempts to hobble our industry there are positive developments in our sector that just isn't being talked about, so here is a list of companies doing incredible things and solving the un-natural problem of petrol based plastics.

Plant based bottles

Products made from seaweed

Looking for more information on the ban