Will the ban on providing free disposable tableware repeat the embarrassment of the -plastic restriction order?

When eating in restaurants and ordering takeaways online, operators often provide consumers with free disposable tableware, which has resulted in a large amount of discarded plastic bowls, plastic cups, and wooden chopsticks. To this end, the Seventh Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 15th Guangzhou Municipal People’s Congress recently reviewed the "Guangzhou Urban and Rural Domestic Waste Classification Management Regulations (Draft)", which stipulates that "catering, entertainment, hotels and other service business units shall not pay for free consumption Provide disposable tableware, disposable sanitary appliances and other disposable consumer goods."

The use of price levers to guide production and consumption has always been a common way to promote environmental protection. At this time, Guangzhou intends to legislate to stipulate that “catering units shall not provide disposable tableware for free”, essentially still following this line of thinking. This kind of practice is actually very reminiscent of the "plastic restriction order" that was implemented many years ago. Judging from the actual effect, the "plastic limit order" that had been high hopes did not seem to have achieved the expected results, but instead made the large supermarkets earn a lot of money. So, will the story of the "plastic restriction order" now repeat itself?

In the past nine years, it is not surprising that the "plastic limit order" has existed in name only. We can even easily find N reasons to explain all this. For example, the price of plastic bags is usually only a few cents, and the consumption of plastic bags is scattered in the shopping behavior again and again, which makes it difficult for consumers to have enough "spending pain"; for another example, The vast majority of Chinese people have not cultivated the habit of bringing their own shopping bags. For them, buying plastic bags is almost "just need"... Considering these specific factors, the failure of "price leverage" is almost inevitable.

In comparison, the consumption logic of disposable tableware and plastic shopping bags is actually highly similar. Even the "just-needed" attribute of disposable tableware is even stronger. After all, such tableware creates a relatively clean and hygienic dining conditions, and there are often no suitable substitutes. Especially for the takeaway industry, disposable tableware is almost a natural "standard configuration." Based on this, it is basically foreseeable that even if the catering unit is required to charge for disposable tableware, it will certainly be difficult to reduce its usage.

Provisions such as "catering units shall not provide disposable tableware for free", in addition to the suspicious "price lever" function, are more importantly declaring the official's inhibitory stance on the use of disposable tableware. Perhaps, what really needs to be tangled is not whether or not to implement "pay for disposable tableware." Because, the obvious reason is that since users of disposable tableware have created extra trash and increased the burden on the environment, there are reasons to "pay the bill." What really needs to be clarified is how to allocate this "cost" incurred by disposable tableware? In other words, will this money be kept in the catering unit and directly become corporate income, or will it continue to flow upward and be transformed into environmental governance funds for the public sector? In this regard, comprehensive arrangements must be made in advance. Only in this way can we avoid the embarrassment of repeating the "plastic restriction order".