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 pandemic called plastic – India
Posted on May 1, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
The Hindu : Opinion / Open Page : A pandemic called plastic.
The people who think it is their liberal rights to ahve free bags all the time ought to go experience this.
We saw the same in Tanzania. We volunteered there for two years in 09/10. The only plastic they have is plastic bags and plastic water bottles. Both western imports. We should be so ashamed to let our worst products be imported into countries that have no idea how to handle plastic waste. Disposable plastic items are a blight in the west and now we are shovelling it into developing nations as they need low cost items just to get by day to day. We should not be giving (read selling) them disposable plastic items as they become a much worse problem for them. Blocked drains causing the flooding of houses, washed out roads, holders of water for mosquito havens, depressing visual sights for the people to have to look at everyday as they walk past them. Do we have no shame?
Is the profit for a few companies worth all this human toll on millions of people?
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