The ban, announced in April, is subject to a consult, launched today by the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which is intended to gather views from stakeholders on the proposal.
The ban will also include cotton swabs.
The UK has enacted a number of initiatives focused on reducing plastics waste, including a charge on single-use plastic bags and a ban on microbeads. The government published a 25 Year Environment Plan earlier this year which outlines steps that will allow the country to “leave our environment in a better state than we found it.” The potential ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton swabs are among a variety of new measures to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste.
The government says an estimated 4.7 billion plastic straws and more than 300 million stirrers are used in the country each year.
Other countries to have banned plastic straws include Scotland, Taiwan, Chile and India. And in July, the European Commission proposed a ban on single-use plastic items like straws and utensils. The legislation, which needs the approval of all member states and the European Parliament, would also require plastic producers pay for cleanup and waste management
In the US, some cities are also starting to enact such bans - or are at least considering it - including many in California and Washington, as well as New York City.
“As awareness of plastics waste grows, corporations and governments are increasingly addressing the issue of single-use plastics in general and plastics straws in particular,” wrote Robert Kravitz on Environmental Leader last week.
In England alone, the government said that people use an estimated 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds per year.
