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? Cleaning Up Our Act: Redirecting the Future of Plastic in NSW – Australia
Posted on March 29, 2020 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastic has vastly improved the quality of our lives and allowed us to pursue
unparalleled advances in technology, transport, communication, healthcare,
safety and education. However, plastic has also become synonymous with
the global consumer economy and underpins our use and dispose mentality—so much so that plastic is piling up in our natural environment and posing a risk to human health.
The plastic that is littered today will still exist in hundreds or even thousands of years’ time—possibly longer. Even when plastic does break down, it
doesn’t go away, it often becomes microplastics or nanoplastics, which can adsorb dangerous chemicals.
The plastic itself and the chemicals attached can be breathed in, absorbed through the skin or ingested. If we don’t improve how we manage plastic now, plastic pollution will only increase, causing more damage to our environment and increasing the risk to human health, now and for generations to come.
This has now all be overshadowed by the Covid-19 outbreak. When that is over (whatever ‘over’ means) we hope this gets back to the top of the agenda.
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