Beverage manufacturer Capri-Sun has launched an online petition calling for a return to plastic straws. The company is aiming to collect a total of one million signatures on the change.org platform – to be passed on to the European Commission.
Capri Sun boss Roland Weening told the Swiss Sonntagszeitung about two weeks ago that he wanted to work towards an EU exemption from the ban on single-use plastic straws.
“Don’t believe in exemptions”
However, Adriana Neligan, a circular economy expert at the German Economic Institute in Cologne, said: “I don’t think there will be an exemption for any company.” Andreas Hermann of the Öko-Institut in Darmstadt said the directive is for environmental protection, but plastic straws are banned – “and the directive does not provide for any exceptions”.
Environmentalists were extremely critical of Capri-Sun’s plan. “The product itself is a disposable catastrophe, it immediately becomes waste – that no longer fits in our time when politicians and people around the world are committed to a sustainable future,” says Viola Wohlgemuth of the Exit Plastik alliance. “A reintroduction of the plastic straw would be a step back into the last century.”
Paper straws and unhappy customers
Capri-Sun, which manufactures in Eppelheim near Heidelberg, has been using paper straws since 2021. Weening said the company is working to switch back to plastic straws in Switzerland and neighboring countries. Customers complain that the paper straws they currently use are harder to insert, become soft and have a papery taste when drinking. The company is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland — where the EU ban does not apply.
Expert Neligan said she does not expect the EU ban on single-use plastic items to be reversed from 2021. However, Neligan was also critical of paper straws, some of which can barely survive a single use. “The question is: how many times can I use a product? And of course this benefits the ecological balance.” Recycled plastic bags, for example, are said to perform better in terms of ecological balance than paper bags.
Looking for alternatives
According to a spokeswoman, Capri-Sun is currently investigating the possibility that consumers will be able to dispose of the drinking bag and the straw – both made of polypropylene – together with the recyclable plastic waste in the future. Polypropylene is a plastic. The drinking bag in the classic 200 milliliter version currently also contains aluminum. In the next step, the drinking bag may only be made of polypropylene.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
