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? Advocacy group says US needs mandated producer responsibility program
Posted on July 19, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastics News – Advocacy group says US needs mandated producer responsibility program.
This is long overdue. Were it to be implemented, it would drastically reduce the plastic waste we generate and accumulate every year. It accumulates every year because it does not biodegrade away.
Enforceable EPR along with incentivising the public to recycle plastic packaging is the key to getting the enormous problem partially under control. How will this be implemented though? Industry have a long record of fighting any change to their current irresponsible use of plastic and consumers will do little unless incentives are offered to them. The government is too scared to tough it as it gets labelled as an extra tax and yet another restriction to impede the economy. In actuality it would help the economy with the extra jobs it would create, the less imports of virgin raw materials that would be needed to bring into the country and the export of the EPR developments to other countries.
Something has to happen though as this is a very path we are on now with all this excessive use of plastic and no desire to recover it.
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