Seattle banned disposable plastic from public places

No more plastics in Seattle’s bars. Starting from this July, the big city on the Pacific coast has banned disposable plastic in its 5,000 public places. Straws will be served only in paper version and there will be a 250 dollars penalty for transgressors. The aim of this rule is to reduce plastic pollution in order to save turtles and give an example to other States.

Indeed, Seattle is the first big city in Usa that has decided to fight against plastic pollution. While other countries and the Eu itself have already adopted rules to reduce plastic, only towns of average size (like Miami Beach and Berkeley) have made the same in the States.

Usa was the first country to promote recycling in 70s and still has a problem with plastic recycling. And yet White House decided to move out from Paris climate deal and Donald Trump has a discouraging mood about the environment. Each American citizen throws away 30 kilos of plastic a year but – according to 2014 Epa’s report - only the 10% of it will be recycled. 15 per cent of plastic litter is reused in producing energy, while 75% is thrown in country’s dumps.

According to the association “Ban the bottle”, only 23% of plastic bottles is recycled, which means that 38 billions of the 50 billions bottles used in Usa, conclude their cycle in dumps, oceans, lakes. The situation is getting worst since China decided to refuse plastic waste to recycle from America: a really big deal for American industries of plastic, such as DowDuPont, that has now 5 more factories. 

«In 2015 we recycled 3 million tons of plastic and half of that were bottles», American Chemistry Council said. They claimed also that 94% of families in the States has a system of recycling, but it doesn't seem enough.