Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Capri to issue €500 fines for using non-recyclable plastic

‘We have a very big problem,’ said the island’s mayor

Wednesday 08 May 2019 14:37 BST

Capri is banning single-use plastics (Getty)

The Italian island of Capri is introducing a ban on single-use plastics this month, with fines of up to €500 (£430) for those caught flouting the new rules.

The move aims to reduce pollution and protect the island’s flora and fauna.

“We have a very big problem and we have to contribute [to finding a solution],” mayor Gianni De Martino told EFE.

“We all have heard about the famous plastic island which exists in the sea.”

Cutlery, plates, cups and anything else made of plastic that is not recyclable or biodegradable will be banned from 15 May, just as the summer season kicks off.

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Show all 15

1/15Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

A father and son on a makeshift boat made from styrofoam paddle through a garbage filled river as they collect plastic bottles that they can sell in junkshops in Manila. The father and son team earn some three US dollars a day retrieving recyclables from the river.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

A composite image of items found on the shore of the Thames Estuary in Rainham, Kent. Tons of plastic and other waste lines areas along the Thames Estuary shoreline, an important feeding ground for wading birds and other marine wildlife.

Getty Images

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Children collect plastic water bottles among the garbage washed ashore at the Manila Bay. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, at current rates of pollution, there will likely be more plastic in the sea than fish by 2050.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Plastics and other detritus line the shore of the Thames Estuary. In December 2017 Britain joined the other 193 UN countries and signed up to a resolution to help eliminate marine litter and microplastics in the sea. It is estimated that about eight million metric tons of plastic find their way into the world's oceans every year. Once in the Ocean plastic can take hundreds of years to degrade, all the while breaking down into smaller and smaller 'microplastics,' which can be consumed by marine animals, and find their way into the human food chain.

Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

A dump site in Manila in 2013. The Philippines financial capital banned disposable plastic shopping bags and styrofoam food containers, as part of escalating efforts across the nation's capital to curb rubbish that exacerbates deadly flooding.

AFP/Getty Images

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Children swims in the sea full of garbage in North Jakarta, Indonesia.

Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

An Indian woman holds a jar filled with Yamuna river water polluted with froth and toxic foam to be used for rituals at the river bank in New Delhi, India. The Yamuna River, like all other holy rivers in India, has been massively polluted for decades now. The river that originates in a glacier in the pristine and unpolluted Himalayas, and flows through Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh before merging with the Ganges River in Allahabad, once used to be the lifeline of the Indian capital. Currently, it is no more than a large, open sewer that is choking with industrial and domestic discharge that includes plastic, flowers and debris and has virtually no aquatic life.

EPA

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Plastic waste is washed up on South Troon beach in Scotland. Recent reports by scientists have confirmed, plastics dumped in the world oceans are reaching a dangerous level with micro plastic particles now being found inside filter feeding animals and amongst sand grains on our beaches.

Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Children collect plastic to be sold and recycled, in a polluted river in suburban Manila. The city's trash disposal agency traps solid waste floating down waterways that was thrown into the water by residents of slums along riverbanks upstream.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

View of the Carpayo Beach in La Punta, Callao, some 15 km of Lima. In 2013, the NGO VIDA labeled the Carpayo Beach as the most polluted in the country - 40 tons of trash on each 500m2.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Trash from Kamilo Beach in Hawaii.

Gabriella Levine/Flickr

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

A scavenger collects plastic cups for recycling in a river covered with rubbish near Pluit dam in Jakarta.

Reuters

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Rubbish fills Omoa beach in Honduras. Floating masses of garbage offshore from some of the Caribbean's pristine beaches are testimony to a vast and growing problem of plastic pollution heedlessly dumped in our oceans, locals, activists and experts say.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

A man climbs down to a garbage filled river in Manila. Plastic rubbish will outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050 unless the world takes drastic action to recycle the material, a report warned in 2016.

AFP/Getty

Plastic waste across the world: in pictures

Garbage on East Beach, Henderson Island (Pitcairn Islands), in the south Pacific Ocean. The uninhabited island has been found to have the world's highest density of waste plastic, with more than 3,500 additional pieces of litter washing ashore daily at just one of its beaches.

EPA

The rules apply to the whole island, with a particular focus on its beaches and coastline.

Shopkeepers, who will no longer be able to sell anything made from single-use plastic, have been given 90 days to get rid of their existing stock.

In 2017, Legambiente, an Italian environmentalist association, conducted an investigation which found the sea and coast between Capri and mainland Italy contained the largest amount of plastic residue in the region of Campania.

Nearby destinations will follow Capri’s lead, with plans to pass laws banning single-use plastics on the island of Procida and in the city of Naples.

“We are seeking to imitate each other to have a much bigger impact,” said De Martino.

Capri, which is home to 12,000 people, introduced a tourist tax several years ago, the proceeds of which are partly used to help care for the environment.

Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

Although the island is taking the lead on environmental policies – the rest of the European Union isn’t prohibiting single-use plastics until 2021 – it isn’t the first one to do so.

Isole Tremiti, an archipelago off the east coast of Italy, banned plastics from 1 May 2018, accompanied by the threat of penalties from €50 to €500 for rule breakers.

The rules, imposed by the archipelago’s mayor, Antonio Fentini, were created to try to curb the high levels of plastic particles found in the water around the islands.

“Day after day we’re seeing humans kill our sea and we had to do something, immediately,” he said.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies