England will move to ban single-use plastic cutlery, plates and trays in a bid to reduce pollution.
It is estimated Britons use an average of 37 single-use plastic items of cutlery every year. That equates to about 1.1 billion single-use plates and 4.25 billion single-use utensils being used annually.
Only 10 percent of these are recycled and the UK's Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said a plastic fork "can take 200 years to decompose, that is two centuries in landfill or polluting our oceans".
The ban follows a consultation by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that ran from November 2021 to February 2022 and received overwhelming public support.
Similar bans have already been made across Scotland and Wales, while the UK already banned single-use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds in England in 2020.
"I am determined to drive forward action to tackle this issue head-on," Coffey said. "We've already taken major steps in recent years - but we know there is more to do, and we have again listened to the public's calls.
"This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations."
While the move to ban single-use plastics has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, there has also been criticism of the slow pace of change and the limited scope of the ban.
"This is like reaching for a mop instead of turning off the tap," said Megan Randles, a political campaigner for Greenpeace UK.
"We need the government to deliver a meaningful plastic reduction strategy, which means bringing in plastic reduction targets and a proper reuse and refill scheme."
New Zealand is set to phase out multiple similar products in July.
Single-use plastic produce bags, plastic cutlery, plastic straws and plastic produce labels will all be banned.
However, the New Zealand Government makes clear "supermarkets, pharmacies, hospitality businesses and health and disability services will still be able to provide plastic straws on request to people with a disability or health condition".
While plastic produce labels will be banned from July and replaced with "more compostable" alternatives, the industry is developing fully home compostable labels with the hope they will be widely used by mid-2025.
