Your Snack Is Getting More Expensive, and This Is Why
Don’t be surprised if your fries suddenly become more expensive soon. It’s because of the ban on plastic containers and forks. Snack bars are looking for alternatives, and those are sometimes more expensive than disposable plastic.
Plastic straws and cutlery have been banned since 1 July, so the end is coming for the rock-hard plastic fork you always futilely use to try to get those hard fries out from under the container. Not immediately, because snack bars are allowed to use up the stock they have, but after that they must choose a sustainable alternative. These will probably be paper bags, cardboard containers and wooden forks. The ban has to do with plastic soup in the oceans: every year, 5 to 13 million tonnes of plastic flow into the sea.
Price tag
Snack bar owners have noticed that these new sustainable packages are a little more expensive. And those increased prices will probably be passed on to the snacks.
Wooden spoon
McDonald’s had already given in earlier: its plastic straws were replaced with cardboard ones. Not to everyone’s delight, as our colleague Adeline explains. Those cardboard straws give her the creeps; she calls it ‘grima’. The feeling other people get when someone runs their fingernails over a blackboard is what Adeline feels when she has to drink through a cardboard straw.
Tastes awful
The wooden spoons that McDonald’s has recently started serving with its McFlurry are also not being enthusiastically received. People think those spoons taste awful and say they will simply bring their own spoon from now on when they go to get ice cream. Highly sustainable, if you simply wash that spoon at home afterwards. Recycling can be so easy!
Snack bar police
Fortunately, there will not yet be snack-container police checking whether all snack bars are properly complying with the new ban. The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate, responsible for implementing and enforcing this law, will initially focus mainly on providing information. But over time, that may change, and warnings or even fines may be issued.
Read also:
- Lidl opens the most sustainable supermarket in the Netherlands
- Sustainable cooking: 5 tips
- Why you should no longer use bamboo tableware
Source: AD.nl
