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? How do we rid ourselves of the plastic menace? -Ghana
Posted on October 23, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsHow do we rid ourselves of the plastic menace? – Graphic Online.
With effect from November 1, a government imposed ban on the manufacture and use of plastic below the 20 microns gauge will begin. However, the Ghana Plastic Manufacturers Association (GPMA) has petitioned the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations (MESTI) to reconsider the ban on light plastic materials with less than 20 microns on the set date. The reason for the petition, according to the GPMA, was that it envisaged that the ban would deny most Ghanaians the opportunity of using a cheaper way of packaging their items. Another concern of the plastic manufacturers is that a ban will affect the packaging of food items such as gari, sugar, groundnut and others. We believe, though, that there could be other cheaper packaging materials such as paper if only we popularise their usage.
Some one needs to tell the people there that oxodegradable is not a biological breakdown . It is a fragmenting process that will make more of a microplastic problem in the environment.
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