May 2022 - Plastic Waste Solutions
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HOUSE DEMOCRATS SEEK CRACKDOWN ON MICROPLASTICS – USA
Posted on May 27, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsSource House Democrats want to crack down on small plastic pellets that have grown notorious for their links to environmental contamination. Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) unveiled legislation yesterday targeting the discharge of the pellets, often called "nurdles," into the environment...
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Majority of Phillips 66 Shareholders Support Studying Shift Away From Virgin and Single-Use Plastics
Posted on May 25, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource A first-of-its-kind shareholder resolution challenging a major petrochemical company on plastics production received majority support (50.4%) from Phillips 66 shareholders at the company’s annual meeting last week. The resolution requests that Phillips 66 publish a...
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NSW bans single-use plastic bags, ACT cracks down on straws – Australia
Posted on May 25, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsSource New South Wales will introduce the first of its single-use plastic bans next week, while the ACT Government prepares to broaden the bans it introduced last year. New South Wales remains the last state or territory yet to crack down...
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Plastic waste meets its (re)maker – Australia
Posted on May 25, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource It will re-purpose all types of plastics (1-7) to be ultra-low sulphur diesel, wax and naphtha to produce other plastics and will be capable of processing up to 200,000 tonnes of waste plastics annually, predominantly from NSW. “The last...
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Plastic fruit sticker example of what is wrong – Australia
Posted on May 24, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsSource Would the maniac who designed the first plastic fruit sticker please stand up! Why is it that every banana, orange, apple, kiwi fruit, and other piece of fruit you buy now comes with a plastic sticker attached to it? I...
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California Department of Justice Launches Unprecedented Investigation Into Plastics Industry
Posted on May 22, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsApril 28, 2022 - California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced this week a historic investigation into the role of fossil fuel and petrochemical industries in a “decades-long campaign of deception” about the harmful impacts of plastic pollution, and for causing...
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What Really Happens To Your Plastic “Recycling”
Posted on May 22, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSouce People often ask what really happens to their plastic recycling. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter where you set out your plastic for recycling collection, whether at the end of your driveway, at your local recycling center, or in a municipal...
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Why Do We Find It Necessary to Rank Threats to the Planet Against One Another?
Posted on May 22, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource On to waste management. Disposal routes for conventional plastics are lacking. These including recycling (only around 10% of plastics are recycled6), landfilling, or incineration. The largest contributor to climate change of those disposal strategies is waste incineration. Not only...
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New WtE facility being built in Melbourne – Australia
Posted on May 19, 2022 by DrRossH in General, Landfills and DisposalSource A Melbourne based waste to energy company is developing a state-of-the-art waste to energy and integrated resource recovery processing plant which will deliver baseload renewable energy while importantly recovering recyclable materials from waste. Great Southern Waste Technologies (GSWT)...
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New research eats through plastic waste – USA
Posted on May 3, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource Scientists in Texas are working on a variant of an enzyme that can break down plastic in mere days. The discovery of this enzyme by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin could help with environmental pollution...
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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?