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ENVIRONMENT

French trains ditch plastic water bottles

French national train operator SNCF has announced it will no longer sell water in plastic bottles on its services, saying the move would reduce the waste from roughly two million drinks.

French train bars will no longer be able to see plastic bottles of water.
French train bars will no longer be able to see plastic bottles of water. Photo: BERTRAND LANGLOIS / AFP.

The plastic packaging will be replaced with recyclable cardboard for still water and aluminium for sparkling.

“Plastic is no longer fantastic,” head of consumer travel operations at the SNCF, Alain Krakovitch, wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

France has gradually increased restrictions on single-use packaging to help reduce waste amid growing evidence about the impact of plastic on sea life in particular.

The government announced on Monday that plastic packaging will be banned for nearly all fruit and vegetables from January next year.

The environment ministry said that 37 percent of fruit and vegetables were sold with plastic packaging, and only the most fragile produce such as strawberries will be given an exemption on the ban until 2026.

“We use an outrageous amount of single-use plastic in our daily lives,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it was working to cut back “the use of throwaway plastic and boost its substitution by other materials or reusable and recyclable packaging.”

Last year, France passed a wide-ranging “circular economy” law to combat waste that forbids retailers from destroying unsold clothes and will ban all single-use plastic containers by 2040.

Paris city authorities announced this week that they were aiming to eliminate all plastic from state day-care centres, canteens and retirement homes by 2026.

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COPENHAGEN

Copenhagen to get warning system for air pollution

Residents in Copenhagen system will be warned when air pollution hits high levels in the capital, the city government has decided.

Copenhagen to get warning system for air pollution

The quality of Copenhagen’s air is slowly improving, but city politicians have nevertheless decided to implement a warning system that will tell the capital’s residents when the air quality takes a dip, broadcaster DR reports.

The idea behind the decision, taken by the Copenhagen Municipality city council, is to warn people with respiratory conditions and in other risk groups when the air is so polluted that it presents a risk to their health.

“Every tenth death in Copenhagen can be linked to air pollution. We have to protect Copenhageners against this,” head of the city government’s health committee, Sisse Marie Welling of the Socialist People’s Party (SF), told DR.

READ ALSO: Pollution linked to ‘one in eight’ deaths in EU countries

The details of how the warning system will work are yet to be finalised, but will likely to be based on telephones.

Asthmatic Copenhagen resident Katrine Østerby welcomed the move but also told DR that she hoped politicians would do more about the causes of air pollution.

“I am a young student who is in good physical condition and does a lot of the right things, so I feel there should also be space for me in Copenhagen – and that it’s air pollution that we should get under control, not me that should move out of the way,” she said.

The system will be implemented by late 2024, according to the plan.

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