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? Bag ban to be among focuses of regional council meeting -Texas
Posted on April 18, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsBag ban to be among focuses of regional council meeting – Mywesttexas.com: Top Stories.
We highly recommend you either ban the plastic bag or start charging for it. They are a blight on so many cities around the world and a big problem for litter reasons, for blocked drain reasons, for mosquito haven reasons, and so on. We used to get by without them but have gotten used to the convenience of them that we forget the environmental and infrastructure damage they do and what that costs to fix.
1) If you ban them consumers will bring in their reusable bags so they won’t have any additional cost
2) If you charge for them at least 10 cents or more (San Francisco determined it costs $0.17 for every bag they have to clean up), the you could assume that just as happened in Ireland when they imposed a 15 cent fee, that bag usage dropped 95% in just a few months. And after a few months people stopped complaining about the inconvenience and move on with their lives. In Italy after 18 months of a bag ban, a poll showed the people did not want them back.
3) You will get cries of lost jobs from bag manufacturers and distributors and more cries of raising the cost of living for the consumers. But let’s look at this. If the plastic bag manufactures moved over to making fashionable reusable bags they would create another line of jobs. This has happened elsewhere. If the customers use their own reusable bags there is no cost of living increase. All the cries come from the bag handlers who care more about their profits than they do for your environment. It happens every time a ban is introduced, but we have to be looking out for the greater good of everyone not just protecting the pocket books of a few at our expense.
4) There are those that say “let’s do more education and wait to see if that works”. All that is doing is putting the decision off another 5 to 10 years. The education has only a marginal effect, and you will find you’ll be having the same discussion then as you are now, all the while your pollution problem is continuing to make your towns unsightly for your residents and visitors. The bag manufacturers and distributors are the one who really push for this as they know it will be a long time before the discussion is raised again.
5) Do NOT consider degradable bags. While sales people pitch this as solution to litter, what they are not telling you is all the more damage you will make. Degradable means the bags would fragment into little pieces and then you’ll have 1000’s of plastic fragments blowing around. They will tell you they will biodegrade, but they can’t prove it. They may cite ASTM references to lead you to believe it will biodegrade, but they are not test results only recommendations on how to do tests. Plus in a dry area like West Texas there is very little biodegradation activity on top of the ground.
6) People will always complain about any change, but after a short time when they find the world has not ended, they get on with their lives as normal and forget there was a change. In fact they will be grateful once the see the cleaner towns there.
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