City rethinks plastic straw ban

Spuntree shares the news of paper straws with you：

In 2018, more than one billion plastic bags, coffee cups, cutlery and other disposable items blocked the landfill in Greater Vancouver. The plastic straw ban included some items that were easy to recycle.

According to the results of the 2018 Disposable Waste Ingredients study in the Greater Vancouver area, plastics and wooden utensils constitute the largest category of disposables, with 331 million plastic straw bans eventually falling into trash cans.

Metro's senior project engineer Karen Storry said that most appliances (nearly 66%) are made of wood, not plastic - missed the opportunity.

“About 130 pieces of tableware are thrown away per person per year, and more than two-thirds are chopsticks,” says Stori. “Chopsticks can be placed in a green bin. This suggests that more awareness may be needed.”

This research is the first time that Metro has launched a full set of 19 disposable items. It is also one of the first jurisdictions to break the source of goods, whether it is from a single-family home, apartment or apartment, commercial operator, or get off at a transfer station.

Of the 262 million discarded cups, almost half or 122 million are coffee cups. This means that plastic straws ban even if these cups are accepted in the RecycleBC program, every resident in Greater Vancouver will lose 48 coffee cups in 2018.

Each resident also handles 70 take-away containers per year, of which hard plastic is the most common culprit, with 71 million, followed by plastic lining paper. The bubble take-out container is expected to be banned in Vancouver next year, with a quantity of 34 million.

The 1.1 billion single-use items deployed in the area account for only 2.4% of total waste. But because plastics are not biodegradable and most end up in landfills, oceans and waterways, they constitute an important environmental issue.

In recent years, many restaurants and communities have launched plastic straw campaigns, voluntarily converting paper straws or automatically stopping the supply of straws in beverages.

The above is the latest paper straws information compiled by Spuntree for you.

For more information on environmentally friendly paper straws, please contact us.