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While the US west coast state has activated a $53.9 billion plan to accelerate the ecological transition, California has taken the issue of single-use plastic pollution very seriously. Even the giant Google is involved in this fight.
170 trillion. This is the number of pieces of plastic found on the surface of the oceans by a study published in the American journal Plos One last March. The result is very close to reality since the methodology concerns more than 11,000 stations around the world which have collected plastic, over forty years, between 1979 and 2019: fishing gear, buoys, clothing, tires but also single-use plastic .
Go up a gear
In France, we have taken up the problem by prohibiting since January 1st fast food restaurants from using single-use dishes for the service of consumers who eat on the spot. A measure that is part of the anti-waste law, the objective of which is to reduce single-use packaging by 20% by 2025.
If the ideas are not lacking between edible tableware and natural packaging like this squash taken from the grimoires of the past by a chain of cafeterias in Uzbekistan, the innovations are not going fast enough to the taste of the giant Google, which has decided to take its share of responsibility in this future challenge. In the opinion of the French people, 86% of whom believe that the reduction and reuse of plastic is first and foremost a problem that manufacturers must solve according to an Ipsos study carried out for Plastic Free July, the Mountain View juggernaut also considers that manufacturers need to move up a gear to implement more sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic.
“Single-use plastics challenge”
Google has just launched a challenge, dubbed the “single-use plastics challenge”, for companies in the food sector to think about a new way of serving food without polluting the planet when the dish is finished. If we didn’t expect one of the GAFA to get involved in this vast subject, the internet giant justifies itself by explaining that it wants to “move from the use of single-use disposable products in our on-site catering operations to more reusable solutions, whether it is snack packaging or changes to the packaging used during the distribution and delivery”. The projects submitted as part of this challenge will thus be tested in the cafes and restaurants managed by Google in the United States, and will be put in particular at the service of its employees.
Google’s action is in fact not isolated. In the small Californian town of Mountain View, we are particularly aware of pollution by single-use plastic. The municipality has indeed entered into an agreement with the American foundation Clean Water Action, which fights against the pollution of water resources, to initiate an experiment consisting of involving voluntary restaurateurs in the testing of reusable dishes. Packs of glasses and plates were thus sent to the participants, whether managers of cafes or food trucks. The campaign is called “reThink Disposable“.
Already at the start of the year, the Los Angeles Times showed how California is leading the way in the United States to reduce plastic pollution. The fight became really concrete when in June 2022 the State of the American West Coast took foreground measures with a law (SB 54) “which requires all packaging in the state to be recyclable or compostable by 2032, reducing plastic packaging by 25% in ten years and requiring that 65% of all single-use plastic packaging be recycled in the same deadline, indicates the Governor’s website.