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? ‘Impending plasticide’: Emergency tax tipped as waste crisis deepens- Australia
Posted on November 21, 2018 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsAustralia’s waste crisis is tipped to deepen, with global wealth manager Credit Suisse predicting the federal government will intervene within two years.
Source: ‘Impending plasticide’: Emergency tax tipped as waste crisis deepens
A tax of the use of virgin plastic is the only market way to get the use of plastics down. Taxing virgin plastic products and not plastic products made of recycled plastic would greatly strengthen the demand for recycled plastic waste. Which is near zero in Australia currently. This is desperately needed. But will any majour government step in front of industry these days even if it means doing good for the country? Particularly a right wing government that is controlled by large industry. We have not seen any examples lately.
The current govt is talking about fast tracking waste to energy plants as a means to stop this plastic waste problem we have. While these plants can process a lot of waste per day, it does nothing to promote the reduction of the use of single use disposable plastic items. May even encourage the manufacturers to produce more. Reduction of plastic waste has to be the answer and for many common products it is quite simple. Plastic bags or straws for example. A plastics tax would do this rather well if the tax was set high enough to make industry seek alternative packaging solutions.
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