The event:
What: 12.30 Joint press conference by European Commissioner for Environment, Janez Potočnik and Jeremy Irons, Narrator and Executive Producer the documentary film Trashed.
The launch will be followed by the projection of the film Trashed in the European Parliament.
When: Thursday 7th March 2013
Where: Berlaymont Press Room, in Brussels
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The news:
The European Commission is publishing a Green Paper on plastic waste to launch a structured discussion about how to make plastic products more sustainable throughout their life cycle and reduce the impact of plastic waste on the environment. The current EU environmental legislation doesn’t specifically address the particular challenges posed by plastic waste. The Green Paper aims to collect facts and stakeholders’ views on the impacts of plastic waste and a way of mitigating them through a European strategy. The consultation consists of 26 questions and will last until end of May 2013. The result will feed into further policy action in 2014 as part of a broader waste policy review, which will look in particular at the existing targets for waste recovery and landfill as well as an ex-post evaluation of five directives covering various waste streams.
The background:
Once in the environment, particularly in the marine environment, plastic waste can persist for hundreds of years. Up to 10 million tons of litter, mostly plastic, end up in the world’s oceans and seas annually, turning them into the world’s biggest plastic dump. The presence of plastic residues, even in the most remote areas of world seas and shores shows that there is a price to pay for unhampered proliferation of plastic waste. Conventional plastic also contains a large number, and sometimes a large proportion of chemical additives which can be carcinogenic, provoke other toxic reactions or act as endocrine disruptors.
jeremyirons.net 
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