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? City of Toronto Bag Ban
Posted on September 26, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsCity of Toronto Bag Ban | Solid Waste & Recycling Magazine.
Again we see the plastic bag manufacturers tryig to steer the plastic bag conversation to the production side of the bag only. They do not care about what happens to a plastic bag once it leaves their factory and that is the problem. Plastic bags main problem is what happens to them after the consumer has finished with them which is about 30 mins to 1 day after they get them home. These bags will last for 100’s of years. Collectively, their destructive toll on the environment is huge.
Looking only at the profits for industry and the threat of lost jobs if bags are banned is only serving the bag manufacturer. It is not serving the social welfare of the citizens of Toronto or their wildlife and environment. You can not look at life cycle costs alone and say one is better than the other. Life cycle manufacturing costs do not factor in the cost of pollution, the loss of attractive environments, the slow death of birds and other water animals.
Business is risky at all times. Some make it, some don’t, it is the natural order of things. Markets change all the time due to fads, ordinances and new technology. Remember Kodak? They did not lobby the government to disallow digital cameras with the threat of lost jobs. Instead they adapted and moved on with the new products. We can’t stick to old 1980’s thinking in this decade where we now have ample evidence of the damage these plastic items are making. They have to be replaced with more sustainable ways.
We hope the council of Toronto can see though this layer of deception to keep their bag ban in place and keep their environment as beautiful as Canada wants us to see.
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