Drinking bag manufacturer Capri-Sun has started an online petition to reintroduce plastic straws. On the platform change.org The company wants to collect a total of one million signatures to hand over to the EU Commission. Capri-Sun boss Roland Weening told the Swiss Sunday newspaperthat he wants to obtain an exemption from the EU ban on single-use plastic straws.

However, Adriana Neligan, an expert in circular economy at the German Economic Institute in Cologne, said: “I do not believe that there will be an exemption for any company.” Andreas Hermann from the Öko-Institut in Darmstadt explained that the directive serves to protect the environment, plastic drinking straws are banned – “and the directive does not provide for any exceptions.”

“Single-use catastrophe” – environmentalists criticize straw petition

Environmentalists sharply criticized Capri-Sun’s plan. “The product itself is a disposable disaster, it becomes garbage straight away – that no longer fits in with our times, in which politicians and people around the world are committed to a sustainable future,” said Viola Wohlgemuth from the Exit Plastic alliance. “Reintroducing the plastic straw would be a step back into the last century.”

Capri-Sun, which produces in Eppelheim near Heidelberg, has been using paper straws since 2021. Weening said the company is working on switching back to plastic straws in Switzerland and neighboring countries. Customers complain that the paper straw currently used is harder to insert, becomes soft and creates a paper taste when drinking. The company is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, where the EU ban does not apply.

Expert Neligan said she does not expect the EU ban on single-use plastic items to be reversed in 2021. However, she was also critical of paper straws, some of which barely survive a single use. “The question is: how often can I use a product? And that of course improves the ecological balance.” For example, recycled plastic bags perform better in terms of ecological balance than paper bags.

According to a spokeswoman, Capri-Sun is currently looking into the possibility of consumers being able to dispose of both the drinking bag and the straw – both made of polypropylene – together in the recyclable plastic waste. Polypropylene is a plastic. The classic 200-milliliter drinking bag currently also contains aluminum. In the next step, the drinking bag will only be made of polypropylene.