A ban on something doesn’t blame the consumer? It simply stops one aspect of unnecessary plastic pollution which has a tiny positive effect.
Plastic bottles in Germany have a 25 cent deposit that you can earn back by returning them when they are empty. This has significantly reduced plastic pollution for plastic bottles which is a tiny but positive effect.
Certain colored plastics for plastic bottles are prohibited too because they are not recyclable. A tiny but positive step.
Once you have hundreds of such steps you have a significant positive leap. The government should ban disposable plastics altogether ideally now but every single ban is putting us a step closer to a world free from plastic.
Plastic straws weren’t banned due to the sheer volume of plastic, but because they are particularly hard to recycle and their shape makes them specially dangerous for wildlife.
In Germany, plastic waste is finally stagnating after rising for the last couple of years. Sadly plastic production and export is still continuing to rise. The only fortunate development is that German plastic waste exports have nearly been cut in halve since 2015.
I fully agree it’s insufficient.
But still, there is no doubt it would have been worse without those policies.
If harm reduction is all we have right now then I will fight tooth and nail against those seeking to abolish it.
Also, reactionary consumers are always against environmental protection, no matter how little progress there is. Try banning ultra fast fashion - a massive cause of pollution - and see how people would react.
A ban on something doesn’t blame the consumer? It simply stops one aspect of unnecessary plastic pollution which has a tiny positive effect.
Plastic bottles in Germany have a 25 cent deposit that you can earn back by returning them when they are empty. This has significantly reduced plastic pollution for plastic bottles which is a tiny but positive effect.
Certain colored plastics for plastic bottles are prohibited too because they are not recyclable. A tiny but positive step.
Once you have hundreds of such steps you have a significant positive leap. The government should ban disposable plastics altogether ideally now but every single ban is putting us a step closer to a world free from plastic.
Except it objectively did not reduce plastic production and it soured the end consumers opinion on environmental conservation.
Plastic straws weren’t banned due to the sheer volume of plastic, but because they are particularly hard to recycle and their shape makes them specially dangerous for wildlife.
https://eurekarecycling.org/plastic-straws/
Of course people like to use fake arguments as the reason why they were banned to make it seem baseless.
In Germany, plastic waste is finally stagnating after rising for the last couple of years. Sadly plastic production and export is still continuing to rise. The only fortunate development is that German plastic waste exports have nearly been cut in halve since 2015.
I fully agree it’s insufficient.
But still, there is no doubt it would have been worse without those policies.
If harm reduction is all we have right now then I will fight tooth and nail against those seeking to abolish it.
Also, reactionary consumers are always against environmental protection, no matter how little progress there is. Try banning ultra fast fashion - a massive cause of pollution - and see how people would react.