US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to encourage the US government and consumers to buy plastic straws to drink, withdrawing the efforts of its predecessor to withdraw plastics and waste from one use.
“We are coming back to plastic straws,” Trump told reporters in the White House, signing the order, saying that paper straws “do not work”.
“I don't think plastic will affect the shark because they are crunchy through the ocean,” said Trump.
The order says that the US government “stop buying paper straws and make sure that they are no longer delivered in federal buildings.” It also orders the government to develop a national strategy consisting in the end of the use of paper straws within 45 days.
The democratic predecessor of Trump, President Joe Biden, proposed environmental measures to reduce the consumption of non -biodegradable plastics that damage ecosystems and pollute food reserves. His administration also supported the global treaty aimed at placing a hat for plastics production.
The Monday executive order was part of the wider weakening of Trump's environmental obligations, which in one of the first acts of his second term He removed the United States for the second time from Paris.
Trump also repealed the Biden administrative policy to complete the use of all disposable plastic products in federal lands by 2032.
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Dozens of countries have imposed bans on various types of disposable plastics, produced mainly by petrochemicals and used to make shopping bags, bottles and other disposable articles.
The Canada government had Plastic items listed as toxic to ban the sale of some plastic productsIncluding plastic cash register bags, cutlery, catering products, sticks and straws. However, many large companies in the plastics industry challenged the list in court. In 2023, a judge of the Federal Court He ruled the list as “unjustified and unconstitutional.“The federal government is Referring to the decision.
TO WATCH |. The federal court refutes a plastic prohibition of one -off use:
Many disposable plastics were to be banned throughout the country in December, but the federal court ruled that on Thursday it is not constitutional. But this may still not mean the return of plastic bags and straws.
If new controls have not been introduced, it is expected that the amount of plastic waste dropped into the environment will increase from 81 million tons in 2020 to 119 million tons in 2040, according to OECD research published last year.
Negotiations on the global treaty to control plastic pollution Last year, with the main nations producing plastic.
Negotiations will be resumed this year, but Aleksandar Ranchov, director of Common Initiative, a think-tank environment, said he would not be surprised if Washington withdrew from the conversations.
“Thanks to the attitude of the new administration and gas and gas position, it can be expected that the United States will coincide with countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia and oppose the adoption of global goals to reduce the production of plastics,” he said.