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 makes push at plastics treaty for easier trade in recyclables
Posted on July 29, 2025 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingWhile United Nations agreements like the Basel Convention have put limits on global trade in plastic scrap, industry groups say it’s important for the plastics treaty to find ways to facilitate shipments of clean recycled materials.
Source: Industry makes push at plastics treaty for easier trade in recyclables | Plastics News
Industry officials say clearer rules could help send recycled plastic collected in developing countries to markets in developed countries with capacity to recycle, including plastics they say could be processed in chemical recycling facilities.
“A lot of the plastic waste that resides in developing economies, we cannot move that,” he said. “We need to make sure that we leverage trade so that used plastics can become a feedstock for new plastics and other valuable products.”
Some countries, however, are continuing to crack down on imports of waste plastics.
“This practice of exporting waste from higher income countries to lower income countries, that lack the ability to handle the waste, this is a form of environmental racism,” said Mageswari Sangaralingam, a researcher and treaty advocate with FOE/Sahabat Alam Malaysia.
A choice of which direction to go. 1) Countries that lack infrastructure to collect and process their plastic waste to send it to countries that are wealthy enough to set up processing of plastic recyclate or b) Wealthy countries with high labour rates being unable to economically recycle their plastic waste sending to countries that have lower labour rates who can process the recyclate.
Discussion · No Comments
There are no responses to "Industry makes push at plastics treaty for easier trade in recyclables ". Comments are closed for this post.Oops! Sorry, comments are closed at this time. Please try again later.