Germany has seen a 64% decrease in plastic bag usage since 2015. Recently Germany agreed to ban the sale of single-use plastics, including plastic straws, cutlery, cotton buds, and food containers by July 2021.
Many disposable plastic products are superfluous with no sustainable use of resources. In addition, plastics end up too often in the environment or in the oceans. We are taking an important national step in the fight against the plastic flood.
–Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze
We throw away 1.3 billion tons of trash worldwide every year, and Germany alone produces 3 million tons of plastic waste annually. Germany’s recent bill to ban single-use plastic is in accordance with the EU’s directive to reduce plastic waste.
Plastics, although recyclable, still require a lot of energy to produce and are not endlessly recyclable. Plastics can diminish in purity over time. Oftentimes they can only between 7-9 times. Glass, on the other hand, can be recycled endlessly without diminishing in quality. Additionally, only a very small fraction of the plastic produced actually gets recycled. In 2017 we generated 35.4 million tons of plastic waste and only 3.0 million tons of plastic was recycled.
Many of the single-use plastics we go through a day are full of toxins like BPA and BPA alternatives. A study published by the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology shows that out of 34 everyday plastics made of 8 different types of plastic, 74% of the products were toxic in some way.