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? New recycling coalition launches
Posted on April 25, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsNew recycling coalition launches | Solid Waste & Recycling Magazine.
This is an excellent program and we wish you luck. The comment by Jim has him misunderstanding the issue. This is not only about energy. It is more about getting wasted resources back to be reused. This uses less energy, lessens our dependence on foreign oil, and conserves our resources. Nothing to do with China and India. This is about irresponsible manufacturing with disposable products being produced, well knowing they will never be recycled but go to landfills or be littered. And irresponsible consumer behaviour to litter or trash everything. With EPR this can be stopped. A good example is in states that have a container deposit scheme. Their recycling of bottles is about 80% compared to about 10% in states that do not have this. In this scheme the manufacturer pays the deposit into a scheme fund. Then as an incentive for the consumer to not litter the bottle or discard to trash, they take the time to get it back to a recycle center and get a few cents for their time. Or they give their bottles to community groups to raise funds. Schemes like this are very simple and very effective. Other such schemes ca be put in place to bring in the EPR and incentives the consumer to not trash or litter everything.
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