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? Industry alliance forms to defend plastic bags – UK
Posted on December 1, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastics & Rubber Weekly – Industry alliance forms to defend plastic bags.
These industry groups are desperately trying to confuse the issue. Their arguments will all focus on how ‘environmental’ it is to use a plastic bag over a paper bag as they take less water to make and less energy. But that is meaningless. Water can be recycled and energy can come from renewables so there is no net effect on the production side.
The reuse of bags a second time for a litter bin is also a desperate grasp. We need to get rid of disposable plastic bags, so whether they are used one or twice does not change the fact that millions of disposable plastic bags go to the landfill after a few minutes or two times after a few minutes. These bags are a blight on a landfill and all the country for miles around a landfill where they blow to. Plus whether manufacturers will admit it or not, these bags do invade our streets, out beaches, parks and water drains. They are completely unnecessary, when a reusable bag will suffice.
If people want to use plastic bags for bin liners then they can to go buy landfill-biodegradable bags. That will stop plastic bags from accumulating in landfills for 100’s of years. Using a shopping bag for a bin liner is not a smart thing to do. A plastic bag in a landfill isolates its contents from the rest of the landfill and impedes landfill internal operations.
What we have to address with plastic bags in this discussion is not only manufacturing issues (which manufacturers like) but their disposal issues which the manufactures have no answer for. Plastic bags do not biodegrade, they are given out for ‘free’ and so there are millions of them in the environment. Plastic bags that were made in the 1980s are still sitting around somewhere. They kill unmeasurable wildlife with horrible means of dying, suffocating, drowning, poisoning, or starvation. Is the life of a 20 year old turtle worth the convenience of carrying a few groceries home? Certainly not and people have to made aware of all the issues not just the few that the manufacturers want us to see with their claimed ‘science over spin’ stories.
Charging a non trivial amount on a bag is a good option to take. It allow users, who choose not to organise themselves to use reusable bags, to still get a bag, but it also raises significant funds that can be kept by the stores or paid into an environment protection fund. Either way it will drop the consumption of plastic bags by 60-80% as seen in other locations. What is significant here is that even a small charge like 10 cents can cause such a huge drop in their use, tells us how low a value people actually do put on a bag. And it is this low value people associate with bag that makes them an environmental disaster as people don’t care if they lose them or use then once again then dispose of them. The easy-come-easy-go scenario. The easy-go facet is the one that makes a problem. Another point the manufacturers will not bring up is that in locations where plastic bags have been banned, 12 months on people in general, are happy with the ban and do not want to go back to the old ways. We just need political courage to make the first step then the industry and consumers will reorganise themselves to accommodate the new ways and move on.
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