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? McDonald’s tosses EPS cups and trays
Posted on January 12, 2018 by DrRossH in General, Plastic Straws, Plastic Waste NewsMcDonald’s Corp. is ditching expanded polystyrene for good around the globe.
McDonald’s, on the company’s website, indicates “the environmental impact of our packaging is a top priority.”
“We also plan to eliminate foam packaging from our global system by the end of 2018. While about 2 percent of our packaging, by weight, is currently foam, we believe this small step is an important one on our journey. These actions represent successes that will continue to raise the bar for our system and our industry,” the company said.
The EPS industry and single use plastics in general) has to face up to the simple observation that its products are highly littered. They know this. Also their products are recycled very little (6%) , if any. To often industry gets away with confusing the consumer with the two words, Recyclable and Recycled. They are very different words. Industry can’t hide behind Recyclable claims all the while knowing there is little recycling and harm is occurring to the environment and wildlife. That is just very irresponsible for them to knowingly be harming the environment for the rest of us. While EPS may be recyclable. It is too hard to recycle, no infrastructure to capture every cup or tray the consumer ends up with. A empty cup or such has no value so users dump it in rubbish bins.
Not that the consumer is innocent either. They own 50% of the problem. The lack of care when disposing of their rubbish leaves a lot to be desired. The lack of concern when they choose a singe use ‘disposable’ plastic item when a reusable item would be far better from a waste perspective.
What we need to look at is a surcharge levy on single use plastic items. This would put their price up, their consumption down and generate a revenue pool that could be used to pay people to go clean up all this littered plastic. This spits the cost over industry and over the consumers as it should do.
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