VALLETA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Several countries have announced plans to ban plastics including products containing microbeads and single-use plastics in the coming few years at the Our Ocean Conference held in Malta on Friday.
France will ban single-use tableware by January 2020. It will also discontinue cosmetic products containing microbeads by January 2018 and cotton buds with plastic stems by January 2020.
Britain has committed to banning microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products, which end up in oceans as run-off and significantly contribute to plastic marine pollution. Britain hopes to have bans in place in manufacturing companies across the entire nation by June 2018.
New Zealand is also taking a lead by banning all "wash-off" products containing microbeads for cleaning purposes. Personal care products, household and car-cleaning products and any other products containing plastics will be banned as well. The ban is expected to come into effect by May 2018.
Banning plastic microbeads in cosmetics is seen as an easy way of reducing the amount of small pieces of plastic getting into the sea, partly because they are used as exfoliates and there are natural replacements, according to a report by British online newspaper The Independent.
However, most plastic gradually breaks down over time into tiny pieces, some of which are small enough to pass through the gut of animals and into their blood vessels and body tissues.
Micro plastic has spread all over the planet, with one estimate suggesting there are 300 billion pieces in the Arctic Ocean alone, the report said.
A major study found humans have produced a staggering 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic since 1950, creating 6.3 billion tons of waste. Nearly 80 per cent of that waste has been dumped in landfill sites or simply thrown away into the environment.
