The EU Commission is considering setting a ban on plastic packaging and new requirements for manufacturers, said Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU Commissioner-designate for environment and the oceans, in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt.

“We definitely want to expand the rules for single-use plastics and are currently investigating in which direction it would be possible,” he was quoted as saying. “An important step would be, for example, to ban plastic packaging or to prescribe the use of recycled plastic.”

New EU regulations on single-use plastics threaten a market in excess of $10 billion, with polypropylene and polystyrene being the plastics most exposed, BloombergNEF estimates.

Adopted last year, the Single-Use Plastics Directive bans plastic products such as cutlery, stirrers, straws, cotton bud sticks and some polystyrene containers.

The EU Commission is also investigating how manufacturers of products such as tires or cosmetics could be obliged to dramatically reduce microplastics in their products.

“Microplastics are on our agenda. By the end of the year, we will provide a very detailed list of all those products that contain microplastics or that use microplastics,” Sinkevicius was quoted as saying.

KEYWORDS EU, environment, plastic