October 2015 - Plastic Waste Solutions
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Marine Plastic Pollution in Waters around Australia: Characteristics, Concentrations, and Pathways
Posted on October 30, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsPLOS ONE: Marine Plastic Pollution in Waters around Australia: Characteristics, Concentrations, and Pathways. Plastics are a diverse group of materials derived from petrochemicals , or may enter the open ocean, where they tend to accumulate in convergence zones...
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Clean up crew renews call for container refund in Tasmania – Australia
Posted on October 30, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsClean up crew renews call for container refund in Tasmania | The Mercury. THE Tasmanian Southwest Marine Debris Cleanup has renewed calls for the State Government to better protect Tasmania’s World Heritage Areas from rubbish with the introduction of a...
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Australia to update plastics marine threat plan – Australia
Posted on October 30, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsAustralia to update plastics marine threat plan | Plastics News#utm_medium=email&utm_source=pn-sustain&utm_campaign=pn-sustain-20151029&email_sustain. This is far over due. Like most other western countries, the over consumption of disposable plastic items is too high in Australia. We don't need to use them at all...
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FTC says firm’s biodegradable claims ‘false’ – USA
Posted on October 30, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsFTC says firm's biodegradable claims 'false' | Plastics News#utm_medium=email&utm_source=pn-sustain&utm_campaign=pn-sustain-20151029&email_sustain#utm_medium=email&utm_source=pn-sustain&utm_campaign=pn-sustain-20151029&email_sustain. Let the science to the talking and not the lawyers. There is ample evidence that there are additives that will make plastics landfill-biodegradable. Speed is not the question. Even if it...
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How do we rid ourselves of the plastic menace? -Ghana
Posted on October 23, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsHow do we rid ourselves of the plastic menace? - Graphic Online. With effect from November 1, a government imposed ban on the manufacture and use of plastic below the 20 microns gauge will begin. However, the Ghana Plastic Manufacturers...
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Closures should focus on right weighting -USA
Posted on October 23, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSpeaker: Closures should focus on right weighting | Plastics News#utm_medium=email&utm_source=pn-sustain&utm_campaign=pn-sustain-20151022&email_sustain. Right weighting and not light weighting is a good idea. As lets not forget a littered light weight plastic bottle is just a big of a problem as a conventional...
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Plastic Shopping Bags & Environmental Impact
Posted on October 21, 2015 by DrRossH in Environmental Plastic SuppliersPlastic Shopping Bags & Environmental Impact. This supplier has some information on plastic bags.
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‘Nurdle’ pollution hits beaches, wildlife – New Zealand
Posted on October 18, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News‘Nurdle’ pollution hits beaches, wildlife - NewsWire.co.nz. Dr James Bell, a marine biology lecturer at Victoria University, says overseas studies into micro-plastic pollution show nurdles are a threat to marine life and can impact on their feeding processes. “They strongly...
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Plastic-eating worms may offer solution to mounting waste, Stanford researchers discover -USA
Posted on October 8, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsPlastic-eating worms may offer solution to mounting waste, Stanford researchers discover | Stanford News Release. Consider the plastic foam cup. Every year, Americans throw away 2.5 billion of them. And yet, that waste is just a fraction of the 33...
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Plastic bag charges in England: will there be ‘chaos’ at the shops?
Posted on October 7, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastic bag charges in England: will there be 'chaos' at the shops? | Environment | The Guardian. The charge only applies to those “single-use” thin plastic bags – the technical specification is: unused plastic has handles 70 microns thick or less It does not...
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How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter?