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? Call for industry to do more to reduce pack waste
Posted on November 28, 2011 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
Speaking at a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum on ‘Moving towards a zero waste economy’ (17 November), Thornton stressed that packaging had an important role to play in protecting products.
However, he added that packaging “was also inherent waste”. He explained: “The one thing we know about packaging is that it will end up in the waste stream. Full Story
Using plastic as packaging is a recent phenomenon and it is getting worse. What happened to cardboard and paper? It used to work before so why doesn’t it work now? Cost to the manufacturer. If the true cost of plastic packaging was to be compared the thought process may be quite different. What are the costs to the environment of all this plastic packaging that doesn’t biodegrade? Manufacturer’s costs should not be the only cost to consider when packaging is made. They need to be held somewhat responsible for the disposal costs of the packaging they produce.
Why don’t we limit packaging to only one layer of plastic in its production and delivery to the retail out let. At the moment we have a product in a plastic bottle say, then packed in a 12 pack with a plastic fastening be it 6 pack rings, or shrink wrapped together. Then stacked on a pallet for delivery and all shrink wrapped again. That is at least 3 layers of plastic for that item. 2 layers go in the trash immediately once at the retailers outlet and the third goes in the trash or recycle bin after the consumer has finished with it. This is over plasticisation without a care for the consequences
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