Taiwan announces timeline to ban single-use plastic straws by 2030

Regulations will also apply to plastic to-go cups, shopping bags, and disposable tableware

Taiwan has announced a sweeping set of initiatives targeting plastic marine pollution, pledging to phase out single-use plastic straws, to-go cups, shopping bags, and disposable tableware by 2030.

The Marine Waste Platform — a partnership between the Environmental Protection Administration and a constellation of eight NGOs organized last summer to address ocean pollution — rolled out their proposed timeline and course of action at a press conference last Tuesday.

Starting in 2019, fast food chains and other large-scale dining establishments will be prohibited from providing dine-in customers with plastic straws, a stipulation that will extend to all food and beverage outlets in 2020. By 2025, the government plans to restrict the use of takeaway plastic straws by requiring customers to pay an extra fee for them, and by 2030, it aims to ban them altogether.

Environmental minister Lee Ying-Yuan (李應元) said that, while he’s aware of several individual cities scattered across the world that limit the use of plastic straws, Taiwan could be the first place to regulate it on such a broad, unified scale.

The implementation of restrictions on plastic to-go cups, shopping bags, and disposable tableware will follow a parallel timeline.

In 2020:

• A preexisting restriction on the provision of free plastic shopping bags applying only to certain retailers will be extended to all stores that issue uniform invoices — an all but ubiquitous type of receipt in Taiwan.
• Dining establishments will be prohibited from offering disposable plastic tableware to dine-in customers
• The government will introduce measures incentivizing customers to use their own beverage cups in public rather than plastic to-go cups

In 2025, customers will be forced to pay an additional fee for takeaway plasticware, including beverage cups, before the full ban on all four single-use plastic items takes effect in 2030.

Lee said that, in addition to phasing out these sources of plastic pollution, the Marine Waste Platform also plans to monitor the prevalence of plastic in Taiwan’s coastal and outer island regions, investigate microplastic levels in the drinking supply, and engage in river waste removal efforts.