MEPs approve drastic measures to curb plastic bag use

European Union (EU) countries will be required to drastically reduce the use of the most polluting plastic bags under new rules voted by the European Parliament (EP) on Tuesday.

MEPs voted in favor of rules giving EU member states a choice between taking measures to reduce annual average consumption of non-biodegradable plastic bags to 90 lightweight bags per citizen by the end of 2019 and 40 by the end of 2025, or ensuring that shoppers must pay for such bags by the end of 2018.

Danish Green MEP Margrete Auken, who is steering the legislation through Parliament, said the issue of plastic bags is "an immense environmental problem".

"Billions of plastic bags end up directly in nature as untreated waste," she said. "They damage nature, harm fish and birds, and we have to get to grips with this."

Auken said she strongly recommended countries adopt pricing bags as the most effective way of reducing consumption. She pointed to Portugal and Ireland which she claimed had seen drastic reductions in litter after they had made it compulsory to charge shoppers for such carrier bags.

Lightweight plastic sacks thinner than 50 microns, the vast majority of plastic carrier bags used in the EU, are less reusable than thicker models and become waste more quickly. They are also more prone to littering the environment and pollute water bodies and aquatic eco-systems.

In 2010 every EU citizen used an estimated 198 plastic carrier bags, some 90 percent of which were lightweight. An estimated eight billion plastic carrier bags became litter in the EU during the same year.

Responding to a question from Xinhua about whether the rules should have covered excess packaging in general, Auken said lots of packaging can and should be recycled or reused. However, this cannot be done with lightweight plastic bags because they are too light. So it made sense to introduce special legislation to deal with this issue, rather than packaging in general.

The vote in favor of the new rules was not unanimous, drawing criticism from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

British MEP Julie Girling, the ECR's environment spokesperson, said that while the ECR supported measures to discourage the single use of thin plastic bags, the law adopted by MEPs raised concerns about implementation.

"We want action to cut down on plastic bag use, but we also need laws that we know will work," she said. "Instead, MEPs have plucked ideas out of the air without any understanding of what the costs and implications could be, or knowing whether they can be delivered."

"The objectives of this law are sound," she added. "We need to reduce plastic bag use, but we want clear rules that will work; not overly prescriptive burdens that even the European Commission fears could be unworkable."

By 2017, the Commission will also have to propose labelling and marking measures for an EU-wide recognition of biodegradable and compostable plastic bags. Endit