US President Donald Trump will promote the use of single-use plastic straws at the expense of paper straws. On Monday evening, according to the news agencies AFP and Reuters, Trump signed an executive order in which he rejects his predecessor Joe Biden's goal of eliminating single-use plastic in public offices.
- We're going back to plastic straws, says Donald Trump in connection with the signing of the executive order.
The incumbent president makes it clear that he doesn't like paper straws.
- They don't work. I've used them many times, and sometimes they break.
- If you use them in something hot, they don't last long. Only a few minutes and sometimes seconds. It's just a ridiculous situation, says Donald Trump.
Environmentalists have long advocated minimizing the use of single-use plastic, which is particularly at risk of ending up in the ocean. This is not something that worries the US president.
- I don't think plastic will affect a shark when it eats. When it munchs its way through the ocean, he says.
The predecessor Joe Biden had a goal that all public offices in the US should have phased out the use of single-use plastic by 2035.
In 2021, the EU introduced a ban on single-use plastic products. The aim was to reduce pollution from plastic products that end up polluting the environment and the oceans. The EU ban meant, among other things, that disposable plastic cutlery and plates were banned. The same applies to plastic straws and cotton swabs.
Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax. The day after his inauguration in the White House on January 20, the president withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement.
The central goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius and to try to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This should be seen in relation to the pre-industrial era, when the world began burning coal and oil.
jel /ritzau/
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