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? It ain’t easy being green: Industry experts talk green plastic packaging marketing challenges, opportunities
Posted on March 14, 2012 by DrRossH in BioPlasticsThe author raises some valid points but as usual misses some obvious ones that consumers are not made aware of. Their ‘green cup’ is green ONLY if a certain set of conditions are followed. These include get in a car and drive out to a commercial compost facility, if you know where one is and drop off the cup. Otherwise this cup is no more green than a normal plastic cup and it will continue to pollute a landfill for many many years. Bioplastics have very severe limitations on their disposal at the current time and until the bioplastic industry themselves invest in a correct disposal path for their products, then bioplastics have no disposal advantages over conventional plastics.
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