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? Bags of opportunities await – UAE
Posted on August 1, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsBags of opportunities await – The National.
There are a number of issues here some I suspect are due to the reporter who wrote the article. The reporter would not be expected to be familiar with the technology but they should at least attempt to ensure what they are writing is based on fact.
The word biodegradable was used many times in the above article
What this entrepreneur (and he is to be congratulated for seeing the problem and trying to do something about it) has selected to do is to use a oxodegradable chemical additive that uses O2 in the air plastic to fragment the plastic into little pieces. This is worse for the environment. It is a chemical reaction, nothing to do with biological activity. He could also have looked around for better technologies to make bags actually biodegradable. The salesman of the chemical additive paints a pretty picture of what they say happens but they do not mention the limitations. Biological break down of the plastic fragments does not appear to have been proven. There other competing more recent technologies that show (via ASTM tests) biological breakdown of the whole bag by natural microorganisms in a landfill. Perhaps a better option for waste but they do not work in litter applications where there are few microorganisms. Which is one of the reasons this oxodegradable chemical has limitations too.
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