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? 
More Canadian firms sign up for Clean Sweep
Posted on April 9, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting Regulations
Plastics News – More Canadian firms sign up for Clean Sweep.
The problem of raw plastic pellets is a huge problem that most people do not know about. It is causing substantial destruction to our environment. These pellets are the raw material that plastic manufacturers buy in order to put into their hoppers and make their new plastic products from. The pellets are shipped around in all sorts of containers from plastic bags to cardboard boxes. There is no regulation on them at all. They get dropped to split open, punctured by forklifts, spilt during transfer and more. Once these loose beads are out they are hard to pick up and often get swept down the drains. If you look closely at sands on beaches you’ll find a lot of it is not sand but small plastic pellets. They are everywhere all over the world and they will last 100’s of years. The amount that gets spilt every year is enormous and nothing is done about it. Industry self regulation is never going to work, we all know that but somehow it still seems to get promoted by governments.
What needs to happen and this should be by the plastics industry governing agency itself is have the raw plastic beads be classed as a hazardous product. There after all its, packaging, freight and handling will be done at a much more strict level which would eliminate a lot of spillage. Businesses that use the beads should have to be listed on a register. Then if a spill is found, that bead type can be traced back to the bead manufacturer and those that use their beads and the culprit identified and fined appropriately.
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