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A plastic bag, a dirty pizza box, plastic utensils, paper napkins, and a soda can—a single takeout meal can feel like a game of recycling trivia. Which items can be recycled? What kinds of plastic go in the trash? What if the container is greasy? Recycling can be complicated, and the rules outlining how to do it vary from city to city, which might be one reason why only about 32 percent of our trash gets recycled.  Only about six percent of the plastic—everything from plastic bottles to IV drips—produced in the U.S. in 2021 was recycled, according to a Greenpeace report. Some plastic items are designed in ways that make them difficult to recycle or recyclers struggle to find people who want to buy recycled material. That’s an issue for the environment and human health—all that plastic breaks down into microscopic pieces and contaminates everything from the ocean to our bodies.We do best with paper—68 percent of that gets recycled. But experts say there are changes you can make to improve recycling at home, in your community, and with your vote. Which plastics can you recycle? Want to better sort trash from recycling? Don’t be fooled by the triangle made of interlocking arrows imprinted on plastic. Those triangles don’t necessarily mean that an item is recyclable—they simply indicate its “resin code,” one of seven categories that denote the type of plastic it’s made of. Only some of these categories are fit for the recycling bin. (Find more details on each resin here.) “Plastic is extraordinarily finicky,” says Darby Hoover, a recycling expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “When you make a plastic package or item, you add dyes, and additives that change its properties to make it as rigid or as flexible as you need it to be. And all those little additives affect its melting point and ability to be recycled.” Plastic resin codes were intended to help recycling facilities, but a 2019 survey of 2,000 Americans showed 68 percent of participants thought the interlocking triangle symbol meant a product could be recycled. These plastic symbols are so often perceived as indicating recyclability that California recently signed a law restricting its use. Experts say you should research which plastics your local recycler accepts, but as a general rule, plastics labeled with a number one or two are most likely to be recycled. Those are the rigid plastics like water bottles and milk jugs, and recycling plants have machines designed to clean, shred, and melt down this type of plastic. Plastic labeled with a five, found in certain types of food and medicine bottles, could potentially be recycled in your community, but its acceptance varies.The other plastics—three, four, six, and seven—are more likely to be dumped in a landfill if tossed in your household recycling bin. These types of items include bubble wrap, shopping bags, and flexible food packaging. “One of the biggest problems is called ‘wish-cycling,’ where we wish something could be recycled so we put it in the recycling bin and cross our fingers,” says Hoover. But it’s a waste of time, she notes. At best it simply finds its way to a landfill. At worst, it jams up recycling machinery and has to be removed by hand, a process that slows down operations. “Those plastic bags wind away around the screens, and you have to physically cut them off. They are the bane of our existence,” says Marti Matsch, the deputy director of Eco-Cycle, a Denver, Colorado-based recycler.Matsch says, on average, Eco-Cycle has to throw away about 10 percent of the recycling it collects in the trash because residents toss in items that can’t be recycled—everything from plastic bags to clothes.(Learn more about the environmental challenges of plastic wrap.) Do you really need to clean your recycling?Another change you can make to increase the odds of your recycling getting recycled is by making sure you keep your bin free of contamination from food, dirt, or chemicals. Paper, for example, is best processed when it’s clean, and any food particles or moisture on other recycled items could mean that paper never gets recycled. That’s why greasy pizza boxes, for example, typically go in the trash instead.(Want to recycle your food scraps? Read our guide to composting.) Cities and towns will often provide residents with guides outlining exactly what they can recycle. In Washington, D.C., for example, you can learn how to dispose of an item by searching the city’s database. The Recycling Partnership, an organization dedicated to improving the recycling system, has a national database that can help you navigate recycling in your local community.Where does your recycling go?Selling recycled material is one way communities offset the cost of collecting, sorting, and processing recycling—and so a crucial part of successful recycling is finding a buyer for recycling material. But demand for that material varies, which is why some communities do not accept all types of recycling.Recycled aluminum is valuable because the metal can be recycled over and over without degrading, unlike plastic, which is often turned into lesser-quality material and used to make new products like carpet or lumber. In Colorado, there’s an active market for plastics labeled with a number five, says Matsch, so Eco-Cycle accepts that resin.But generally, recyclers face more challenges finding buyers for plastic. The same additives and dyes that produce different shapes, textures, and colors of plastic also make it difficult to produce a material worth buying. “With all that variation, it’s very difficult to find buyers to take that material and turn it into something new because they’re looking for a simple recipe, not something so complicated,” says Matsch. For decades, that buyer was primarily China, which imported millions of tons of used U.S. plastic. But in 2017, China increased its standards for the plastic it was willing to purchase and left U.S. recyclers without a buyer. Some of that went to other countries like Indonesia and Mexico or was tossed in a landfill. Increasingly, however, some companies—Target, for example—are committing to use more recycled materials from recycling plants. How to make recycling more effective One solution, say environmental policy experts, are more “bottle bills.” If you live in one of the 10 states where these laws are in effect, you may have noticed soda bottles with anywhere from five to 15 cents printed on the label. This creates a set value for a bottle and incentivizes consumers to bring them to a participating recycling container. A 2020 report on litter found that states with bottle bills have half as much litter as those without them.Drop-off sites are also helpful for collecting plastic bags. Some grocery stores offer plastic bag drop-off sites where bags are more likely to be kept clean and can be taken to speciality recycling centers. “Another thing that’s extremely important is for folks to look at what’s happening policy wise and to support efforts to reduce waste,” says Hoover. Many cities are setting “zero waste” targets that embrace more recycling as one strategy to keep waste out of landfills.  However, some environmental experts say we need to think outside of the blue recycling bin if we really want to stem the flow of plastic pollution entering the environment. “The best thing we can do for taxpayers is make less waste,” says Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics. In recent years, some states have adopted legislation that makes producers responsible for the recyclability of their product. These laws vary in their approach, but they might require a manufacturer to financially contribute to recycling centers or to change the design of their product to be more easily recycled. One new approach to recycling Enck wants to see more are programs that allow for bottles and other packages to be washed and refilled. She cites Coca-Cola’s recent announcement that it will try to refill or reuse a quarter of its glass and plastic bottles by 2030 as an example of changes top plastic polluters like the beverage company should make. Enck also points to smaller scale initiatives, such a start-up that washes and refills bottles in a vending machine. “That is the future,” she says. “That is what we need.”

ObOBy Jo HarperReportingExcessive outbreaks of seaweed are clogging up waters from the Caribbean to the Baltic. Now the algae is being harvested alongside farmed crops to create ingredients for cosmetics and food products.Mari Granström says it was her passion for scuba diving that opened her eyes to the continuing problem of toxic algae blooms in the Baltic Sea.The outbreaks occur when tiny cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, suddenly multiply rapidly, stretching out on top of the water for potentially kilometres.Also called eutrophication, it is a form of marine suffocation, and it is a significant environmental concern in the Baltic Sea. It can occur in 97% of the total area of the sea, according to official figures.The blooms impact on other marine life, by causing oxygen deficiency, reducing water quality, and blocking out light.Getty ImagesThe problem is caused by too many nutrients entering the water, typically nitrogen and phosphorus from artificial fertilisers. These are carried into the sea by the rivers of the surrounding countries – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden.While the use of such fertilisers has reduced in recent years, the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, the intergovernmental organisation that aims to improve water quality in the sea, says “the effect of these measures has not yet been detected”.Some six years ago Ms Granström, a Finnish biochemist, determined to tackle the problem herself. She’d harvest the algae and use it to make ingredients for a host of products. In addition to cosmetics and human food, the algae extracts can be used in detergents, animal feed, packaging, and even as a replacement for plastic.This comes as there is a growing trend for seaweed to be harvested for such purposes, as a replacement to oil-based ingredients.ObO”I saw with my own eyes – or perhaps couldn’t see – how it was affecting the marine ecosystem, and decided to do something,” she says. “There was too much finger pointing and not enough action.”Ms Granström says she worked on the project as “a hobby for a long time”, before in 2019 setting up a company called Origin by Ocean (ObO). She is the chief executive.The business, which has attracted both commercial investment and European Union funds, is now continuing with a pilot production scheme ahead of aiming to be fully operational by 2025-26.ObO collects the algae off the coast of Finland, where it is sucked on to boats and then separated from the water. The firm is also importing invasive sargassum seaweed from the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean.ObOVast blooms of that algae have plagued that region for a number of years. “There are 25 million tonnes of sargassum blooming in the Caribbean every year,” says Ms Granström.”It stops people fishing and harms tourism. We are now buying several tonnes of sargassum from the Dominican Republic, and this volume will increase.”The company further sources unwanted seaweed from Portuguese and Spanish waters.ObO’s pilot processing is done at a facility in northern Sweden. It uses a patented biorefinery technology it calls “Nauvu” to separate the algae into numerous useable materials.These are then sold to food, cosmetics, textiles, packing and agricultural companies.Global TradeMore from the BBC’s series taking an international perspective on trade.To help grow the business ObO is working with one of its investors, Finnish chemicals and industrial group Kiilto. “If this can be successfully scaled up here, then ObO can replicate similar processes around the globe,” says Ville Solja, Kiilto’s chief business development officer.ObO already has plans to set up a refinery in the Dominican Republic.Across in Sweden, a separate business called Nordic Seafarm is showing just how versatile seaweed can be.”We make algae-based gin and beer, both locally produced,” says director Fredrik Gröndahl.Nordic Seafarm, which grows its own seaweed, is a commercial spin-off from Seafarm, a Swedish government-funded project that helps commercialise aquaculture research. “If this market [for seaweed] gets big, and we think it will, we are ready to scale up,” adds Prof Gröndahl, who is also project leader of Seafarm, and head of department for sustainable development, environmental science and engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.”Just imagine if Ikea asked for algae-based meatballs globally, which could happen.”Fredrik GröndahlProf Gröndahl also hopes that in the future algae will become a key ingredient in animal feed, to replace environmentally-damaging fish meal, which is common in pigs and poultry diets. “Algae is also cheaper than existing ingredients as there is no cost for feeding and irrigation.”Back at ObO, Ms Granström says the aim is for shoppers around the world to “play a part in cleaning up the Baltic Sea” by simply buying a number of consumer products.”We wanted to do something to help at both ends of the process, upstream and downstream, as it were – cleaning the seas, but also monetising a change in consumer behaviour.”

While convenient and popular, single-use coffee pods are viewed by many as an environmental nightmare. But despite the piles of discarded capsules this brewing method leaves behind, it might not be as terrible for the planet as you think.In some cases, brewing a cup of joe in an old-school filter coffee maker can generate roughly 1½ times more emissions than using a pod machine, according to an analysis by researchers at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi in Canada.The study adds to a growing body of research that shows assuming packaging does the most harm to the environment is often misguided. Instead, experts say, it’s important to look at a product’s entire life span — from the time it’s made to when it hits the landfill — to figure out which changes might have the biggest effect on improving sustainability. In the case of brewing coffee at home, this latest study shows that it largely boils down to not wasting water or coffee.“As a consumer, what we’re left with is the visible waste in front of us, and that often tends to be packages and plastics,” said Shelie Miller, a professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, who was not involved in the new analysis. “But the impact of packaging, in general, is much, much smaller than the product itself.”Here are four takeaways from research that can help you lower the carbon footprint of drinking coffee:Less coffee = fewer emissionsThe recent study, which looked at four common brewing techniques, found that instant coffee appears to produce the least amount of emissions when the recommended amounts of water and coffee are used. This is in part because there is typically a small amount of instant coffee used per cup and boiling water in a kettle tends to use less electricity compared to a traditional coffee maker. What’s more, the method doesn’t produce coffee grounds that have to be thrown out, according to the study’s researchers.Traditional filter coffee, on the other hand, has the highest carbon footprint, mainly because more ground beans are used to produce the same amount of coffee, the researchers wrote. This method, the researchers noted, also tends to consume more electricity to heat the water and keep it warm.“At the consumer level, avoiding wasting coffee and water is the most effective way to reduce the carbon footprint of coffee consumption,” said Luciano Rodrigues Viana, a doctoral student in environmental sciences at Chicoutimi and one of the researchers who conducted the analysis.How you make coffee mattersThe environmental impact of coffee is heavily influenced by how people prepare their drinks, Rodrigues Viana said.For example, in the case of instant coffee, if you use 20 percent more coffee and heat twice the amount of water, which often happens, then the data suggests coffee pods might be the better choice.Meanwhile, coffee-pod machines are typically designed to use the ideal amount of coffee and water, leading to less of both being wasted. Compared to traditional filter coffee, drinking about a cup of the beverage brewed from a pod saves between 11 and 13 grams of coffee, the data shows.“Sometimes it’s really counterintuitive,” said Andrea Hicks, an environmental engineering expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She conducted a similar analysis comparing different brewing methods, and also found pods had less environmental impact than the conventional drip filter method, and in some cases were better than using a French press.“Often people assume that something reusable is always better, and sometimes it is,” Hicks said. “But often people really don’t think about the human behavior.”For instance, the latest analysis found the benefits of pods can be lost if their convenience encourages people to drink two cups instead of one.There are other factors to consider: How your electricity is generated plays an important role, Rodrigues Viana added. A cup of coffee prepared using electricity mostly generated by fossil fuels produces about 48 grams of CO2 equivalent, the analysis found. In comparison, a cup made using primarily renewable energy emits roughly 2 grams of CO2 equivalent.And other research has shown that adding milk can “drastically increase” the overall carbon footprint per serving.Don’t fixate on packagingTo be sure, producing and discarding pods can have an impact on the planet. But studies show that the lion’s share of the environmental effects of drinking coffee come from producing the beans and the energy needed for brewing.“Regardless of the type of coffee preparation, coffee production is the most GHG-emitting phase,” Rodrigues Viana and his fellow researchers wrote. “It contributed to around 40 percent to 80 percent of the total emissions.”Packaging accounts for a much smaller share, the data shows. Here’s the math for pods: Manufacturing them and sending the used ones to a landfill generates about 33 grams of CO2 equivalent. Producing 11 grams of Arabica coffee in Brazil — the amount that can be saved by using a pod rather than brewing filtered coffee — emits close to double that amount: about 59 grams of CO2 equivalent.But if you want to help reduce the impact of packaging, you can recycle used pods or switch to reusable ones.Bottom line: Be mindfulAll that said, the first thing to do might be to ask yourself if you actually want that cup of coffee and whether you’re going to drink all of it, Miller said.“There’s not necessarily a really easy rule of thumb to tell consumers, ‘Here’s the best environmental option,’” Miller said. Instead, she recommends focusing on reducing waste and consumption overall and trying to be as efficient as possible with the resources you have.“It really comes down to being mindful about the products that you consume and trying not to waste our products,” she added.Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday

What will become of that plastic bottle you just diligently placed in the recycling bin? If you’re reading this from the European Union, there’s a chance it might end up far, far away — possibly fueling an industry associated with serious environmental and health risks.Official figures from statistics agency Eurostat show the EU exported 1.1 million tons of plastic waste to countries outside the bloc in 2021. And according to the European Parliament, around half of all the plastic collected in the EU for recycling is shipped elsewhere, with the number one recipient being Turkey.

The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated the impact on workers and local communities there. “They’re the ones bearing the brunt of the impacts of what is known to be a hazardous industry.” 

HRW environmental researcher Katharina Rall explained. “People talk to us about the health effects or what they believe are the effects, linked to the work itself, the fact that they’re working in factories where they’re potentially inhaling toxic [air].”

Workers said they lacked access to protective equipment, with some claiming to have worked there since they were children. Rall also noted shoddy enforcement of environmental laws for nearby communities.A house made of recycled plasticTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Tighter waste rules coming

But if you’re concerned about that plastic bottle, you may be pleased to hear EU waste management laws are due for a reboot.  On Tuesday, a clear majority of the European Parliament voted in favor of banning the export of recyclable plastic waste to non-OECD countries, which includes major recipients like Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia and other former colonies of European powers. 

In 2021, an activist group in Indonesia built an art installation out of plastic wasteImage: Prasto Wardoyo/REUTERS

This goes a step beyond the European Commission’s own proposal from late 2021, which would only allow such exports with prior consent. Outward shipments of non-recyclable, unsorted plastics were already banned in early 2021 to align the bloc with international standards.

A majority of EU lawmakers also supported phasing out shipments to OECD countries, meaning Turkey would be off the cards in the second half of this decade. In addition, non-EU export of all kinds of waste (which totalled 32.7 million tons in 2020) should only be allowed to non-OECD countries if they explicitly agree to take it and show they can deal with it sustainably, the European Parliament explained in a press release.

“We must turn waste into resources in the (EU) common market, and thereby take better care of our environment and competitiveness,” said Pernille Weiss — the center-right European Parliament member who led the report, which was put to the vote on Tuesday — in the statement, the underlying idea of which is that the EU must start to take more responsibility for its own waste, as well as working to reduce it.

Full plastics ban ‘only a matter of time’

With the EU legislature’s stance now clear, the ball passes to the EU member states, who must adopt a position before negotiations on the final legal package can begin.

Rall said it wasn’t yet clear which way the EU national governments would go on the plastics export ban. But for her, it is “only a matter of time” before the EU implements such a ban, not least because of the documented human rights issues.

“At some point there will be very few options left on where to export the waste,” she told DW.

China banned imports in 2017, and Turkey did so temporarily in 2021, Rall explained, while at the same time noting that the practice may be on the rise elsewhere, citing both West and East Africa as new destinations for European, US and Canadian waste exports.

In fact, EU plastic waste exports are on the decline, having peaked in 2014, as figures from Eurostat show. China was for a long time the major recipient of EU plastic waste, a title that passed to Turkey after Beijing introduced its ban on imports in 2017.

Fewer exports means greater responsibility

With exports rules likely to tighten regardless of the exact outcome of EU negotiations, the onus should shift to domestic processing capacity, as well as waste reduction. The EU plastic recycling industry had a turnover of €7.6 billion ($8.2 billion) in 2020, according to industry body Plastic Recyclers Europe, with sorting capacity having significantly increased over the past two decades.European countries are being pressured to up their own recycling effortsImage: Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa/picture alliance

In the past, firming up rules has prompted fears that more plastic would be incinerated or put to landfill. Within the EU, around 40% of plastic is used for energy recovery, 33% is recycled, and 25% is put to landfill, according to the European Parliament.

But Theresa Mörsen of the NGO Zero Waste Europe says changed export regimes would also encourage domestic reform. “If plastic waste is retained inside the EU, it will actually facilitate better sorting and recycling of the existing plastic,” she told DW. It would also encourage member states to enact laws that require greater recyclability, according to Mörsen. “We see a lot of non-recyclable things that end up either being incinerated or exported through illegal channels,” she explained.

For campaigners like Mörsen and Rall, Tuesday’s vote is a clear win. “Another important step towards ending waste colonialism,” said Lauren Weir of the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Edited by: Andreas Illmer, Nicole Goebel

Beer from a disposable cup and currywurst with fries on a plastic plate? Those images could soon be a thing of the past in German football stadiums.As early as the Bundesliga’s re-start after the World Cup and winter break, catering operators in stadiums must also offer reusable cups by law, at the same price as the disposable version. 

The new requirements from the Packaging Act have been in force since January 1, 2023. They oblige companies such as restaurants, canteens, supermarkets or cafes that sell takeaway food and drinks to also offer their products in reusable packaging. 

This also applies in football stadiums, right down to the fourth tier of German football. However, in this case only for beverages. For food, stadiums may continue to offer disposable containers for food as the only option if they are made of pure cardboard, wood or aluminum. Most stadiums currently offer paper plates and wooden cutlery. 

According to Environmental Action Germany (DUH), 17 of 18 Bundesliga clubs had voluntarily implemented the new requirements at the start of the season. Schalke 04, the last club in the Bundesliga to switch, also did so on January 1, 2023. Just five years ago, only 10 of 20 clubs in the Premier League used exclusively disposable cups, causing a mountain of waste of more than 8.5 million plastic cups every year. 

Bundesliga leading by example

According to Germany’s Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, this makes Germany a pioneer throughout the European Union. German football also plays a pioneering role internationally in the area of sustainability, expert Tanja Ferkau confirms to DW. A look at the corner flags used to depict global warming in German footballImage: Wunderl/BEAUTIFUL SPORTS/picture alliance

This is because, starting next season, ecological as well as economic and social sustainability criteria will become a mandatory part of the German Football League Association (DFL) licensing process with the goal of becoming the most sustainable league in the world. Some of the criteria could have been stricter, but Ferkau explains that they have to ensure they can also be implemented by a team in the third tier.

The German Football Association (DFB) is also getting involved with several measures and campaigns in the DFB Cup, the Women’s Bundesliga and the 3. Liga. There are “climate logos” on the captain’s armbands, vegan bratwursts or corner flags with the “warming stripes.” These are a visual representation of scientific data from climatologists and are intended to illustrate the issue of global warming.

“Environmental pioneers” St. Pauli, Bremen and Freiburg 

Some Bundesliga clubs have been engaged with the issue of environmental protection for much longer than others. DUH highlights three: FC St. Pauli, SC Freiburg and Werder Bremen. “These are clubs that have thought about environmental protection from the very beginning, since the late 1990s, when it wasn’t an issue in football at all. They have set trends,” DUH’s head of circular economy, Thomas Fischer, told DW.

Among other things, Freiburg has equipped its stadium with one of the world’s largest solar roofs, uses green electricity and has relied on returnable cups for decades. Werder Bremen is a role model when it comes to sustainable mobility: The public transport connection is exemplary, and there is also an infrastructure for thousands of bicycles that can be parked at the stadium not to mention a good network of footpaths. St. Pauli, meanwhile, selects its partners according to ecological and social criteria.

Alongside energy, transport, emissions and waste, merchandising is one of the most important action areas in football, says Fischer. Sporting goods manufacturers Nike and Puma have already made the switch. They say they use 100 percent recycled polyester for jersey production. At Adidas, the figure is just over 90 percent, but the Bayern Munich jersey is already made exclusively from recycled polyester. According to the DUH, second tier St. Pauli are “environmental pioneers” amongst German teamsImage: Oliver Ruhnke/IMAGO

DUH: “Eastern German clubs need to catch up”

However, Fischer reports that there are also clubs that are very defensive about the issue, such as Schalke 04 or VfB Stuttgart. Many East German soccer clubs also have a lot of catching up to do, he adds. “Dresden, Aue, Chemnitz, Zwickau – they don’t stand out with pilot projects either. There, we’ve always noticed a very defensive attitude.” The reactions of these clubs were often monosyllabic, “sometimes even almost aggressive.” And that’s when he realized, “Okay, they don’t understand.” 

That’s why it’s immensely important that the DFL set targets to create a binding force in the areas of resource management, waste, traffic emissions, merchandising, so “that even those who don’t want to deal with these issues, have to.”

Overall, Fischer believes German football can still go a step further and hopes that green energy, regenerative energies for electricity use and sustainable turf heating will become standard. 

In addition, it could play a big role in terms of mobility. “How do people travel? Can we do without short-haul flights? You don’t have to fly from Berlin to Frankfurt, there’s a good ICE train connection there. Do you need your own fleet of company cars? Maybe you could also ride a bike if you live close by.”

The least that could be done in the near future is to switch to reusable food containers. That would be a another significant step in club’s obligations that would continue to eliminate unnecessary disposable waste week after week.

This article was translated from GermanKick off! – Special: Midseason Review, Part 1To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Starting in October, the country will prohibit plastic plates, cutlery and other items. Environmental advocates are pushing for a more comprehensive measure.As England announced over the weekend that it would ban several single-use plastic items, including cutlery and plates, environmental advocates greeted the measure with more of a tepid clap than uproarious applause, seeing it as a better-late-than-never measure that leaves more changes needed.While they were grateful for action, several activists said the move came well after similar measures by England’s neighbors and did not ambitiously address the proliferation of disposable plastic, which ends up in landfills and oceans and takes decades to break down.“It is a step in the right direction,” said Nina Schrank, a senior campaigner for Greenpeace U.K. “But it is a small step.”Starting in October, England will ban single-use plastic plates, trays, bowls, cutlery and some polystyrene cups and food containers. The government said that England uses an estimated 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery and 721 million single-use plates per year, but that only 10 percent are recycled.England banned plastic straws, cotton swabs and drink stirrers in 2020. In announcing the new ban on Saturday, government officials said they were looking into further measures, including a ban on plastic items including wet wipes and tobacco filters, or mandatory labeling to help people dispose of such items correctly.England’s environmental department said in a statement that the government would be “pressing ahead” with a plan for a deposit return initiative for drink containers, and “consistent recycling collections in England.”Rebecca Pow, an environment minister, said in a statement, “Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside, and I am determined that we shift away from a single-use culture.”Governments across the globe have employed single-use plastic bans as a way of reducing plastic, most commonly focused on products, like straws and bags, that can be made from other material.Advocates say that the bans have been largely successful in limiting the targeted types of plastic products, but that a more comprehensive approach is needed. And they say England has fallen behind its peers after Brexit severed Britain from Europe.The European Union approved a ban on single-use plastic items in 2018, which went into effect three years later. England’s neighbors, Scotland and Wales, each banned a similar list of items last year. (Northern Ireland, the fourth constituent country in Britain, has not.)The United States has not banned any single-use plastic products at the federal level, but some cities and states have their own bans on items, including plastic bags and straws. Some states, such as California, have gone further to reduce single-use plastic items, aiming to phase out single-use packaging that is not recyclable or compostable.Environmental advocates say England’s coming ban, which does not include plastic takeout containers, does not go far enough.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEurope’s ban has had mixed results, with some countries showing more progress than others, according to a report by Seas at Risk, a group based in Brussels. The ban eliminated 10 single-use plastics, but did not stop member countries from going further. The European directive also addresses other common forms of single-use plastics, including takeout food containers, that England did not ban.“If you are only banning some items and overlooking other products, then it is not sufficient,” said Frédérique Mongodin, senior marine litter policy officer at Seas at Risk.As for the timing of the move? “It’s very late,” she said.With the European directive underway, activists are looking beyond individual product bans to measures including the promotion of reusable containers.Ms. Schrank, the Greenpeace official, said many of the largest sources of plastic waste remained untouched, including food and grocery packaging. Snack bags and fruit and vegetable packaging are among the most common items found in plastic waste, she said.Instead of targeting them individually, she said she would like to see an aggressive government target to reduce single-use plastics by 50 percent.“We’re being fed little treats here, when the big real questions are being unanswered,” Ms. Schrank said.Nor is the issue with single-use items limited to plastics. Larissa Copello, consumption and production campaigner for Zero Waste Europe, said replacing single-use plastic with single-use items made of other materials only helped so much.“The issue of single use is not only about plastic, but single-use paper and single-use glass,” she said. “It’s all about the consumption of products that are only used once and thrown away.”For activists in Britain, eyes are on what comes next. Steve Hynd, policy manager at City to Sea, an environmental organization based in Bristol, said the ban was welcomed but “these are very much minimum agreed standards.”“The ban will help England catch up with other countries that already implemented similar bans years ago,” he said. “But for England to be true ‘global leaders’ in tackling plastic pollution like this government claims to be, we need them to go much further.”