Are plastic straws coming back into favor? The gastronomy industry found a loophole in the law

In some catering establishments you can still get plastic drinking straws, even though EU regulations prohibiting the use of plastic have been in force for three years – “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” reports on Monday.

The ban on placing single-use plastic products on the market has been in force in Poland for over two years. Despite this, you can still get a drink with a plastic straw in bars, cafes and restaurants.

The situation results from the precise use of a gap in the definition of a disposable product – says Przemysław Chimczak-Bratkowski, president of the ESG Academy, an organization dealing with education in the field of sustainable development and corporate responsibility, in “DGP”. As he explains, manufacturers offer straws made of thicker material, which are certified as reusable products after passing laboratory tests for dishwasher resistance.

Since the SUP directive only prohibits the placing on the market of single-use plastic, such “reusable” plastics are formally legal, even though customers in catering establishments treat them as ordinary waste thrown away after one use – explains the interlocutor in “DGP”.

In practice, no one in the bar washes the plastic straw after each use and passes it again to another customer. The difference between it and the banned single-use straw exists only on paper.

Polish regulations provide for strict penalties for violating the ban on placing plastic straws and other prohibited disposable products on the market. The penalty for offering prohibited disposable products is from PLN 10,000. up to 500 thousand PLN, and for errors in collecting consumer fees or failure to provide alternative vessels, sanctions ranging from PLN 500 to PLN 20,000 are provided. zloty.

The problem is that the effectiveness of penalties depends on how often and with what determination the supervisory authorities carry out inspections. And these – according to conversations with market practitioners – are rare, random and focus on easily identifiable violations, such as not charging for a cup for a drink, or not offering reusable tableware.

Detecting and proving a violation of the ban on the sale of prohibited straws is more difficult, because it requires assessing whether a given product is really “disposable” within the meaning of the regulations – which, given the existence of reusable certificates or non-SUP certificates, is not obvious and requires laboratory tests. (PAP)

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