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? Frontiers | Assessing benefits and risks of incorporating plastic waste in construction materials
Posted on July 16, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingPlastic pollution and climate change are serious and interconnected threats to public and planetary health, as well as major drivers of social injustice globally. Prolific use of plastics in the construction industry is a key contributor to these crises. Businesses, materials scientists, institutions, and other interested stakeholders are currently exploring the incorporation of plastic waste into building materials and infrastructure at an accelerated rate. Examples include composite asphalt-plastic roads, plastic-concrete, plastic/crumb rubber turf, plastic lumber, plastic adhesives, and plastic soil stabilizers. While some believe this to be a reasonable end-of-life scenario for plastic waste, research shows such efforts may cause further problems. Focus on these uses of plastic waste represent an ongoing effort at “greenwashing,” which both delays and distracts from finding real solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. This mini review of existing research on the incorporation of plastic waste into building materials and infrastructure provides evidence that such practices exacerbate the negative health, social, and ecological impacts of plastics and increase demand for continued production of new (virgin) plastics. We urge caution — and more research — before widely adopting these practices. This review compares known impacts of these and various other treatments of plastic waste with recommendations for future research.
Source: Frontiers | Assessing benefits and risks of incorporating plastic waste in construction materials
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