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 up the return rate using CDS’s? – Inside Waste
Posted on June 13, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Recycling
With most states and territories having a CDS, is it time to turn our attention to honing the system? What about upping the refund rate?
Source: How do we up the return rate using CDS’s? – Inside Waste
Closed Loop’s Robert Kelman made the point that the established schemes seem stagnant in terms of return rates, which is currently about 68 per cent nationally. He also made it clear that there were still between three to four million containers being littered or landfilled annually. One of his fixes is to increase the refund rate (more on that later – Ed), and that more return points are needed.
“We could substantially increase convenience,” he said. “The rate of collection points to people in Europe is about 1 per 1000. Whereas here, it varies from 1 to 12,000 to 1 to 20,000, depending on the state and metro/regional area.”
Another fix, he said, could be refilling bottles instead of returning or landfilling them.
Shaun Fraser from Queensland’s Container Exchange has hard data, which has helped his organisation identify pressure points that need to be addressed moving forward. This includes demographics that are not coming to the party, as well as the amount of containers still bound for landfill.
“We know where participation is happening, and we know that the demographic of 18 to 35 is not where it needs to be,” he said. “We also know out-of-home consumption sits at about 20 per cent. We’re also working with councils because we’ve got a lot of waste data that shows up to 500 million containers are still going in household red-top bins. Certainly, there’s disproportion in the MUD (multi-unit dwelling) stream, but with standalone residences there’s plenty of containers there as well. We’re really focused on those two things.”
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