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? A cheat sheet on the circular economy – Australia
Posted on October 29, 2021 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsA Circular Economy proposes a system which minimises extraction, keeps materials in the economy for as long as possible and ensures they are able to be reused, repurposed or recycled at the end of their first life. It minimises environmental externalities and maximises use of renewable resources including energy.
Our current economic model is pretty much a linear one: take (extract) – make (stuff) – waste (landfill). It treats resources as infinite and assumes the environment can absorb the waste. It is therefore unsustainable in the long run.
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