Germany announced[1] June 24 that it would be issuing a law banning single-use plastic products, effective July 2021, to bring the country in line with a similar European Union (EU) directive[2] that went into effect June 2019. The EU directive sets forth a timeline for the removal of single-use plastics from the EU market, as well as staggered goals for recycling plastics that stretch into 2030. The German law, which has not yet been finalized nor released to the public, will mirror some of these requirements, but may also include language specific to the German market.
German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said the country will continue to move away from throwaway culture and single-use plastics, in keeping with Europe-wide goals to become the first climate-neutral continent.
Multiple nations have implemented similar bans, including Wales,[3]France,[4]China[5] and others.[6] China in particular has some of the most intractable pollution problems, and the announcement[7] this past January by the National Development and Reform Commission to phase out single-use plastics is ambitious: The nation aims to ban single-use plastics from all major cities by the end of 2020.