England to ban some single-use plastic items

The ban will say goodbye to plastic cutlery, plates and bowls and will come into effect in the autumn of 2023, according to Britain's environment department.

“We are going to be bringing in a ban on a whole number of problematic single use plastics by October this year.”

“If you can use something multiple times and it’s better quality than plastic, why not do that?"

The government says England currently uses an estimated 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery every year - most of which are plastic, as well as 721 million such plates. But only 10% end up being recycled.

Most plastics can remain intact for centuries and damage oceans, rivers and land where millions of tonnes end up as waste each year.

A 2022 global survey found three in four people want single-use plastics to be banned as soon as possible.

A ban on supplying plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds already came into force in England in 2020 - a move which many environmental groups and activists welcomed.