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 maker taking on bans – USA
Posted on June 6, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastics News – Bag maker taking on bans.
It is good to see common sense is being taken to ban these bags in increasing numbers. The reasons touted by the bag manufacturer, Hilex are a stretch of the situation. They seem to be clasping at straws to find reasons to criticise the bans.
If they are worried about everyone switching to reusable bags which they claim will be made in China, why don’t they start making their own reusable bags?
They say the are getting up to 30% of recycled plastic in their bags now and this is really good they report. What this does not tell you is that for every bag they want to recycle, they have to make 3 new bags. How is that sustainable?
It is easier (lower cost) for a truck to drive up with 5 tonnes of raw virgin resin and drop it off than it is to initiate a wide range collection service to gather all the bags from consumers and their households spread far and wide. They know this very well, yet make excuses as to why they can’t do this. Putting out a number of recycling bins in the hope that people will voluntarily change their behaviour and take this used plastic bags to one of these drop off points is naive and an indication of how out of touch this company is with the consumers and their behaviour.
Their excuse that people are reusing bags as bin liners or doggie poop bags is not an excuse at all. They claim this negates the very low recycling rate of 3% or less. It is not true. All this means is that the bag has a life of another day before it goes to the landfill where it will sit for 100’s of years. If they really did care about the product and not their profits, why would they not use a landfill-biodegradable additive to allow the bags to biodegrade in a landfill? Plastic bags are the #1 item in a landfill and impede the landfill from working as the material is trapped in a nonbiodegradable bag separated from other material. Banning bags by cities will substantially reduce the number of bags that go to a landfill which will be a big benefit to the landfills.
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