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? ECM Biofilms’ biodegradability claims based on “competent and reliable evidence,” says judge -USA
Posted on February 17, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsIn his initial decision in the case of the FTC versus ECM BioFilms, the Federal Trade Commission’s Chief Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell ruled that plastics additive manufacturer ECM Biofilms Inc. violated the FTC Act by deceptively claiming, and providing others with the means to claim, that plastics treated with ECM additives would completely biodegrade in a landfill within nine months to five years, and that tests proved this claim.
However, he also found that the FTC had failed to prove that ECM’s biodegradability claims implied that ECM Plastics will “completely biodegrade into elements found in nature, in a landfill, within one year.”
“The tests upon which ECM relies constitute competent and reliable evidence demonstrating that ECM Plastics are biodegradable, including in a landfill, and Complaint Counsel have not met their burden of proving that these claims are false or unsubstantiated,” he wrote.
These additives need to be thoroughly researched as they appear to work and allow plastics to biodegrade in a landfill over a time period of month to years depending on plastic thickness and environment conditions in the landfill. What is needed is an ASTM type standard for them to pass and then the consumers can be assured the label is factual and not greenwashing.
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