Okay, so soon, in the Netherlands we will have extra fees on any type of plastic in the supermarket, restaurants ect.
If you buy a pre made salad in the supermarket, 50 extra cents for the plastic bowl it is in. If you go get takeout, 50 cents for the packaging.
It will be on a lot of things, and I’m not sure if I agree with it fully. Yes, 100% definitely something needs to be done to limit plastic, but it’s quite extreme in a time where a lot of people are already struggling to survive financially. It’s just, I can feel the disconnect and distance from the politicians to the actual situation of a lot of Dutch people. I don’t necessarily like that it fully is made the consumers responsibility and additional costs, while I feel the producers won’t change anything. Handle it at least partially on that level. People still want their food, and I don’t see people massively show up with their own reusable storage boxes, so I don’t think it’ll be that effective regardless. Plus, thigs like the salad I mentioned, those are prepackaged so even if you would have wanted you cannot even get it without the packaging.
@Meekepeek, as a fellow Dutch person, I would specifically like to ask you for your opinion on this as well!
I suppose in an ideal world the responsibility for this would fall on the businesses to not use plastic packaging so they don’t need to make people pay a fee. But as it stands it’s probably easier for them to not change anything. So it just kinda sucks tbh.
Heaven forbid the Government actually inconvinience businesses for a change by implementing actual laws that would eradicate the use of things like plastic packaging that gets thrown away immediately by a certain year.
this was kinda sorta implemented in my country a couple years ago too and it’s… well i’m conflicted about it
i think it could’ve worked as a transitional measure, but i don’t think it works as a definitive one
i agree with El that this would be a far better measure:
My country tried to implement this for a while, but I agree that it would work better as a transitional method as alternatives were implemented rather than being its own standalone measure without any quality alternative forms of packaging etc that could be used. For grocery stores, ofc, we transitioned to reusable cloth bags, and I am fully in support of that because it’s a small one-time cost to the individual that reduces the amount of plastic in landfills by a lot, but with things like an extra cost for plastic packaging/utensils/etc…
I agree with this. Why should the burden fall on the consumer and not the companies causing the problem? Obviously, no matter what you want to tax a company on, they’re going to pass that burden onto the consumer, but that’s why I believe different measures need to be taken.
A few years ago they raised the prices on plastic bags here, but I’m not sure about anything else. I don’t see why they don’t just get rid of them altogether? They’re just making more money while doing nothing about the issue.
Oh, we have that here, except there’s no plastic at all. It’s either paper or reusable/bring your own. In one of our nationwide supermarkets, they don’t have the bags in the fruit and veg section for loose selections.