The SUP Directive Five Years On: What You Can Serve With a Drink Today

The ban on plastic straws took effect on July 3, 2021, and in its first season it raised more questions in the hospitality industry than it actually changed. Five years on, the market has settled, but the same doubts keep coming back: what exactly is banned, what "reusable" really means, and what inspectors might look for.

What the directive prohibits

Directive (EU) 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerns single-use plastic products. Straws made the list of products withdrawn from the market, alongside balloon sticks, cutlery, and stirrers. The ban covers placing products on the market, not simply holding existing stock, but in practice it means a venue can no longer legally buy disposable plastic straws.

The key distinction is this: the directive doesn't ban straws as such, only single-use plastic. A reusable product, designed and placed on the market for repeated use, falls outside the scope of the ban. A glass straw that meets this definition is legal even when it's served to a guest in a drink.

How to document reusable use

During an audit or a sanitary inspection, product documentation comes in handy: a material declaration, confirmation of food-contact approval under Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, and a description of the washing procedure. For glass, there's also the thermal resistance parameter — it determines whether the straw safely survives a cycle in a commercial dishwasher.

A practical rule: if the manufacturer can't state the number of washing cycles and the temperature, you have no way to document reusability.

Paper under the regulations

A paper straw is legal because it isn't plastic. The problem is that it remains single-use, so it doesn't reduce the waste stream, and it often contains a barrier layer and glue. From an environmental-reporting standpoint, this is simply swapping one disposable product for another, not a real reduction.

What this changes in the calculation

With disposables, the cost is linear and recurs every month. With glass, the cost is one-time, and after that only breakage losses add up. For a typical hotel bar turning over a few hundred drinks a week, the unit cost of glass drops below paper by the second, or at the latest the third, month of use.

Three things worth asking your supplier

• What type of glass it is and how resistant it is to thermal shock.
• How many wash cycles the manufacturer guarantees, and at what temperature.
• Whether you’ll get a material declaration for an audit.