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? Help for a Plastic Planet: New Report Focuses on Solutions to Global Plastic Pollution
Posted on April 25, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsThe significance of plastics being singled out as the main source of marine debris around the globe is that plastic production continues to increase at a rate of about 9 percent annually and the waste from it is cumulative: “Since most plastic items will not biodegrade in the environment it seems inevitable that quantities of debris will increase over time…” (Andrady 2011).
“Key Pre-Consumer methods of reducing plastic pollution, identified in the report, that can be integrated into regional solutions include:
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to help redistribute the burden of handling end-of-life plastic from governments and individuals who may be impacted by the waste, to producers whose interests would then be aligned with those of the region. Under an EPR approach, producers have the responsibility to bear the costs of managing their waste products. This in turn incentivizes innovation to find ways to reduce the amount of plastic packaging used, as well as to ensure it is properly recovered when the product has reached the end of its useful life. In an EPR oriented system, the costs of running programs and building new infrastructure, including recycling and other waste management facilities, are redistributed away from national governments. EPR allows for design flexibility–bounded by clear performance standards– so innovative companies rather than those that push costs off onto regional governments can succeed in the marketplace, and programs can be tailored to the governance, capacity, and institutional realities of any given nation.”
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