The ban on items including plastic cutlery and plates and polystyrene trays, is set to take effect in England in the autumn and has been welcomed by environmental groups, although they argue that the ban could have done more.

‘England’s ban does not go far enough as, for example, the EU’s Single Use Plastics Directive, which has measures in place for banning additional items such as oxo-degradable plastics, which break down into microplastics quicker, but still have the same harmful effect on the environment,’ said Paul Bugden, policy officer of the Clean Earth Trust locally.

Most neighbouring jurisdictions, including Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Jersey, have conducted consultations over implementing such legislation.

Guernsey, however, is still to take this step, and Mr Bugden has been left feeling frustrated that the trust’s calls for policy action have so far fallen on deaf ears.

‘We have tried to make civil servants’ lives easy by providing draft legislation which we adapted from the Isle of Man. If a fellow Crown Dependency is able to enact legislation regarding a ban on single-use plastics, then we should be able to as well,’ he said.

Some local businesses are now working to lower the amount of single-use plastics they use.

The cafe at the Bathing Pools now uses wooden stirrers and spoons, and director Helen Bonner-Morgan said she was determined to reduce the cafe’s plastic waste further.

‘The only items we still use are lids for our coffee cups, and we are working with suppliers to find a more environmentally-friendly alternative,” she said.

Mrs Bonner-Morgan also welcomed England’s ban, saying it was ‘the right thing to do’.

Calls for bans on plastic products have been made for a number of years.

In 2019, a petition by Plastic Free Guernsey calling for a ban on plastic carrier bags received more than 6,000 signatures and was accepted by the Environment & Infrastructure Committee, but no formal legislation was drafted.

Then the CET launched a petition calling for a ban on single-use plastics which more than 1,500 people have signed to date. The petition states that, of the 48,924 pieces of litter recovered from beach collections in 2021, 33% were single-use plastics.

. The petition on change.org is available at http://bit.ly/3WszvUl

A BAN on plastic, cutlery and trays in the UK has been welcomed by Environment & Infrastructure president Lindsay de Sausmarez.

E&I is in charge of Guernsey’s response to climate change, as well as protecting and conserving the local environment.

‘Minimising single-use and non-recyclable plastic is an ongoing action as part of our Climate Change Action Plan and we anticipate that this recent announcement will have a positive knock-on effect in Guernsey to help us achieve this action,’ she said.

While acknowledging that developing legislation locally can be ‘a very slow and resource-heavy road to making changes’, Deputy de Sausmarez said that Guernsey should benefit from England’s ban because of the many links the island has with UK supply chains.

‘Businesses and all of us as consumers also have a role to play in reducing the prevalence of single-use plastics by our lifestyle choices,’ she said