Sustainability is one of the main challenges we will face in the coming decades and the new regulations on the use of plastic bags in the hospitality industry are in this line.
In the first days of this year, a New Regulation on Plastic Bags was released, but it actually came into force on July 1, after a few months of extension.
Said regulation obliges and affects all establishments and businesses in our country, the hospitality sector being fully affected, of which we intend to bring a little more light to this, legal irruption, which has caught us on a changed footing.
The most relevant points that affect the use of the bags in shops and hospitality establishments
- Bags that are delivered within the establishment must be charged
- The price to be applied for each of them must be set by the merchant.
At this point is where the great doubt of any businessman, hotelier or not, appears, since it must be a deterrent for the client and he should look for other ways of transporting food, drink or any other dispensed item, and in turn should also sharpen the ingenuity as an entrepreneur to find new logistics solutions for their clients, in favor of cornering the plastic bags that are causing so much damage to the environment.
In the development of the standard, the brushstrokes of how to act are given, for example, in bags with a thickness less than 15 microns that are not for bulk or reduction of food waste, their price should be around 5 cents per bag, those of more microns (from 16 to 50) around 15 cents …
The rule establishes an exemption from charging bags with thickness up to 15 microns, whose use is for hygiene or intended to reduce food waste … (the garbage that we know vulgarly), with which consumers may request that the leftover food from a lunch or dinner be put in this type of bags to avoid the payment of the same …
Obligations of the hospitality entrepreneur with the new standard of plastic bags
The collection of the bags that are provided to customers for the various services or sale of products of the establishment, must appear in the purchase ticket like the rest of the products.
For all customers to be informed of these new regulations, it will be mandatory to expose to the public in a visible place in the establishment, an informative poster of the prices of the bags, including the reference to Royal Decree No. 293/2018 of May 18 and with the text of the fulfillment of the obligations.
If this is not done by the business, it will be exposing itself to a possible sanction of up to € 900, as is already typified in the Spanish regulations of the Waste Law and the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users, the well-known as Law 22/2011.
The end of Plastic Bags in shops and hospitality establishments.
The standard has already set deadlines so that little by little they are replaced and abandoned their uses. The key date is 2020, when the ban on the sale of all types of bags (regardless of weight) comes into force, with the exception of those produced with compostable material.
Different alternatives are already coming to the market to change the material of the necessary packaging for the transport of products that we use every day.
The Royal Decree highlights that the objective is to reduce the consumption of lightweight plastic bags. Thus, the use of compostable plastic bags is an alternative, as well as opting for other non-plastic materials as several businesses already do.
We will begin little by little to see the traditional ones in other sectors of the paper trade or the raffia vegetables as they are already seen in some supermarkets …