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? ASTM Plastics Committee Approves New Standard for Testing Polymer Degradation Rates
Posted on September 26, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsASTM Plastics Committee Approves New Standard for Testing Polymer Degradation Rates.
“ASTM D6691 is a Tier I test and the new method is Tier II, closer to real-life conditions,” says Ratto. “In ASTM D6691, the sample is cryogenically milled to increase surface area, while in D7473, the sample item is tested as is.”
This is a good move if we can get plastics to actually biodegrade like this and not have the results fudges as often goes on now by some plastics manufacturers to over sell their product.
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