Gulf Neighbors Tighten Single-Use Plastic Rules, Saudi Cafes Still Wait

Key facts

Riyadh's tea shops and cafes still hand drinks over in ordinary plastic cups, and no Saudi regulation currently says otherwise. Three Gulf neighbors have all moved on single-use plastics this year, each at a different pace and each targeting different products.

• United Arab Emirates: since January 1, 2026, a nationwide rule bans single-use plastic cups, lids, cutlery (including chopsticks), plates, straws and stirrers made from conventional plastic. It is the final phase of a campaign the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment built up over several years.
• Bahrain: Decision No. 7 of 2026 bans the manufacture, import and sale of single-use plastic bags thinner than 57 microns, effective August 20, with a grace period to clear existing stock. This is a bag rule, not a cup rule.
• Oman: the fifth phase of a shopping-bag ban under Ministerial Decision No. 8/2024 took effect July 1, extending the prohibition to furniture, jewellery, tailoring and car dealership retailers, part of a push toward eliminating plastic bags nationwide by 2027. Cafe cups are not part of this rule either.
• Saudi Arabia: the only binding rule from the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) is a materials-and-labeling regulation, not an outright ban. Phased in since 2017, it requires single-use plastic products, including shopping bags, film, and disposable tableware such as cups, plates and cutlery, to be made from oxo-biodegradable material and carry the SASO compliance mark. It stops short of banning those products outright the way the UAE's new rule does. Market-research firms including Mordor Intelligence forecast a possible outright ban on non-compostable plastic cups sometime between 2028 and 2030, a forecast, not an enacted rule.

What it means for Riyadh

For anyone ordering a cup of tea along Al Hamra, Ar Rabi or Riyadh's other cafe strips, nothing changes this week. Saudi cafes and tea shops remain free to serve in standard plastic cups: SASO's rule governs what those cups are made of and how they're labeled, not whether cafes can offer them at all, so nothing here amounts to a ban the way the UAE's now is.

That gap is worth noticing. The UAE took roughly six years to move from its first single-use plastic restrictions to the cup and cutlery ban that landed in January. Bahrain and Oman are still working through bag-specific phases and have not yet touched cafe serviceware at all. If Saudi Arabia eventually follows the UAE's path, as market forecasts suggest it might by the end of the decade, Riyadh operators would likely get a multi-year runway to shift toward paper or compostable cups, similar to the lead time neighboring markets have had.

For residents, the practical takeaway is simple: a plastic cup in Riyadh today is not a preview of an imminent ban. It is the status quo, and one that part of the neighborhood no longer shares.

Background

Saudi Arabia's only enforced single-use plastics rule dates to SASO technical regulation M.A-156-16-03-03, announced in 2016 and rolled out in stages. The first phase restricted imports of non-dissolvable plastic products, including shopping bags and electronics packaging, from July 2017, with manufacturing and trade restrictions following that October. A later phase, originally due in February 2019, was postponed to September 2019, extending the same requirement to disposable tableware, including cups, plates and cutlery. Across both phases, the rule requires these products to be made from oxo-biodegradable material and carry the SASO compliance mark, rather than banning them outright the way the UAE's rule now does.

Each Gulf neighbor has taken a different route since. The UAE began restricting single-use plastics at Dubai airports in 2020 and built out a phased, cup-inclusive ban that reached its final stage this January. Bahrain has issued a series of narrower decisions, including a 2021 rule on small bottled-water containers and a 2022 bag-thickness rule, with the 2026 update tightening that threshold further. Oman has run its shopping-bag ban in sector-by-sector phases, with officials aiming for a full nationwide bag phase-out by 2027. None of the three has yet replicated the UAE's move to cafe cups and cutlery.

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative both set broad sustainability and circular-economy targets, but neither has driven SASO to expand its existing cafe-serviceware rule from a materials-and-labeling requirement into an outright ban. That leaves the 2028-2030 window cited by market researchers as a forecast built on regional trend-watching, not a confirmed regulatory timeline.

Takeaway

The UAE now bans plastic cups and cutlery outright, Bahrain and Oman are tightening bag rules this year, and Saudi Arabia has done neither: its binding SASO rule requires cups and other disposable tableware to be made from degradable material and carry a compliance mark, but stops short of banning them outright. Riyadh cafes will keep serving in plastic cups until SASO bans them outright, and the 2028-to-2030 window floated by industry forecasts remains a projection, not a policy.