Plastic, bioplastic and paper cups – spilling the baby with the bathwater?

As of January 1, 2023, single-use plastic and bioplastic cups, as well as currently known paper cups, will be prohibited from being placed on the market in Hungary. Ecocatering has summarized what you can know about the new regulations and how to prepare for the changes.

It is known to most people – but certainly among caterers – that Regulation 301/2021 on restricting the marketing of certain single-use and certain other plastic products. (VI. 1.) Government Decree introduced a number of prohibitions and restrictions on single-use plastic products on July 1, 2021. (We wrote more about this here.) Perhaps everyone has experienced, or at least heard about, that it is no longer possible to sell plastic straws, cutlery and plates, and although the existing sets can still be used according to the regulation, most restaurants have switched to paper straws by themselves. , wooden cutlery, paper or sugarcane plates, or other alternatives. In the case of plastic products, the public mostly agrees with this provision, but environmentalists are already divided on how good a decision it was to include bioplastic products under the same umbrella as traditional, fossil-based plastics. These include products based on PLA, Mater-bi or Ecovio, which are made from renewable plant resources, are biodegradable and compostable, i.e. they have many advantages compared to traditional plastic products in terms of their ecological impact.