PARIS, France (AFP) — The French government on Tuesday postponed a ban on plastic throwaway cups by four years to 2030 because of difficulties finding alternatives.

The ban was meant to start on January 1. But the ministry for ecological transition said that results from a recent review into the “technical feasibility of eliminating plastic from cups” justified pushing back the deadline.

It said in an official decree that a new review would be carried out in 2028 of “progress made in replacing single-use plastic cups”. It added that the ban would now start January 1, 2030, when companies would have 12 months to get rid of their stock.

France has gradually rolled out bans on single-use plastic products over the past decade as environmental campaigners step up warnings about their impact on rivers and oceans.

A 2020 law set a deadline of 2040 to eliminate all single-use plastics. A ban on plastic bags for loads of less than 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) of 30 fruit and vegetables was introduced in 2022 and has dramatically changed supermarket habits.

The postponement marks “yet another step backwards in the fight against plastic pollution, under pressure from lobby groups,” said Manon Richert, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Zero Waste France

She said “the argument put forward about technical feasibility is shaky” because solutions exist but haven’t been widely adopted due a lack of investment and an inadequate regulatory framework.

Environmental campaigners say the phase out of single-use plastics has been too slow.

At the start of 2024 the groups Zero Waste France, Surfrider Foundation Europe, Les Amis de la Terre, France Nature Environnement and No Plastic in my Sea issued a failing grade in their report card for implementation of the 2020 law.

They pointed to measures which had not been implemented and government decrees which limited the impact of the law.

Meanwhile, the government’s DGCCRF consumer protection agency said in a report released last year that almost a fifth of about 100 companies it checked in 2023 were breaching regulations on the production or use of single-use plastic items.

Its investigators said some marketed plastic-free products that in reality contained plastic, and some changed the name of the item in a bid to get around the ban.