June 2023 - Page 2 of 2 - Plastic Waste Solutions
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New tech tackles plastic farm waste – Australia
Posted on June 7, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingLa Trobe University researchers will investigate how plastic farm waste can be recycled as part of a new partnership. Source: New tech tackles plastic farm waste - Waste Management Review La Trobe University researchers will investigate how plastic farm waste can...
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ACT retailers call for plastics bans delay – Australia
Posted on June 7, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsThe Australian Retailers Association has urged the ACT Government to revisit the timelines for the next stage of single-use plastics bans. Source: ACT retailers call for plastics bans delay - Waste Management Review This week, the ACT Government announced it...
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Call for comprehensive mandated Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for soft plastics in Australia
Posted on June 7, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource The collapse of REDcycle in 2022 brought into sharp focus the urgent need for national leadership and action to hold brand owners and the packaging industry to account. For too long, these producers and generators of these materials have avoided...
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How old is that microplastic? – Japan
Posted on June 4, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsResearchers from Kyushu University and Asahi Karel have developed a method to estimate the age of microplastics in the ocean Source: How old is that microplastic? - Inside Water The team applied their new method to estimate the age of...
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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?