156,499 of 175,000 signatures

Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of the European Commission, Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissario europeo per l'ambiente and Member State Environment Ministers

Petition

Please answer the public’s demand to move away from single-use plastics and end plastic pollution. To do so, the European Commission must uphold the ambitition of the EU law on single-use plastics, and make sure that its guidelines do not open the door to exemptions and substitutions that would water down its impact.

Why is this important?

By now we know that plastic is everywhere. It's not just in our drinking water and oceans. It has made its way into our fruits and vegetables too. [1, 2]

This is why we fought to ban single-use plastics, which are so harmful to our planet and our health. And we won with the adoption of the EU single-use plastics Directive. But the plastics industry is working hard to undo that win by intervening in the final stages of the law implementation.

The way they’re doing that is pretty sneaky. They’ve used technical discussions on the wording of the implementation guidelines, so that items like single-use packets of crisps can be considered reusable, and bans on single-use plastics straws and cutlery could be rendered completely ineffective. [3] This would effectively cancel our win.

But we have a powerful decision maker on our side. Executive Vice-President of the European Commission and champion of this law, Frans Timmermans, promised to be our ally. [4] It's time to remind him of that promise so that once more he can face down the plastics industry, who right now are hard at work behind the scenes.


References:

  1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/08/20/636845604/beer-drinking-water-and-fish-tiny-plastic-is-everywhere?t=1597226680821
  2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341513246_Micro-_and_nano-plastics_in_edible_fruit_and_vegetables_The_first_diet_risks_assessment_for_the_general_population; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-020-0707-4
  3. https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2020/07/30/draft-guideline-sup/
  4. https://twitter.com/TimmermansEU/status/912621524959547392

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