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? Greens give Premier the mail on 10c refund – Local News – News – Wyndham Leader
Posted on February 23, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsLet’s be practical about this and not get caught up in the nickel and dime attitudes. No one can say what they are going to pay or a can of coke or a bottle of beer when they walk into a shop. It may be $0.50 or it may be $3.50. What this means is that we won’t be able to feel the extra 10 cents that the drink manufacturer is passing on.
Bin hoppers? We should all be putting all of these containers in the recycling bin at the moment anyway. You can choose to keep the containers out of the recycle bin and either recycle them yourself or let the scouts or a local sports club come and get them, just like used to happen when we were all kids. In public areas you will see low socioeconomic people going around and looking for cans and bottles to retrieve and sell to raise some extra money for themselves. That is the power of this bill. It will remove almost every can or bottle that is littered from our roads and beaches. Plus some people& community groups will make some money for this. For most of us that 10 cents is not a big enough enticement to go out of our way which is what the writers above are implying, but there are many who will and that is what makes this bill such a good idea.
If you have not been paying attention lately to how many cans and plastic bottles are littering our streets and beaches go take a look. There are 100’s everywhere. They are such a blight on our landscape. Every street has a 1/2 doz or so bottles lying in the gutter, the beaches have a bottle littered about every 100 m. We pick up a dozen or so plastic bottles every day along the esplanade in Port Melbourne. Don’t’ worry about the 10 cents and whether the council is going to make an extra 50 cents off your bottles, There are much bigger issues here. Think about the clean environment we will get, about community groups raising $1000’s off this, ($9 million for the scouts in SA last year!) Think about less fortunate people who raise a few $ a day collecting litter, think about the kids on school break getting a few $ for picking up these littered bottles, think about the jobs this program creates and how grateful those people will be to have these jobs. Think about saving Australia resources so that instead of 70% of all bottles and cans going to the landfill to be lost forever, they will now be recycled and put back into use, saving us from importing more raw materials.
Greens give Premier the mail on 10c refund – Local News – News – Wyndham Leader.
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