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 Than 260 Million Tons of Waste per Year Will Be Converted to Energy by 2022, Forecasts Pike Research
Posted on July 28, 2012 by DrRossH in Landfills and DisposalToday, nearly three-quarters of the trash discarded worldwide ends up in landfills or open pits. With many countries facing dramatic population growth, rapid urbanization, rising levels of affluence, and resource scarcity, systems that convert waste to energy (WTE) are becoming an attractive technology option to divert this waste to useful purposes and to promote low carbon growth.
According to a recent report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, more than 800 thermal waste-to-energy plants operate in nearly 40 countries around the globe – a number that is expected to grow rapidly over the next decade. By 2022, Pike Research forecasts, at least 261 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) will be converted to base load power and heat. Under a more optimistic scenario, that figure could reach 396 million tons annually, the equivalent of 429 terawatt-hours of power.
“Ten years from now the world’s rapidly increasing urban population will generate nearly 3 billion tons of MSW per year, representing an estimated 240 gigawatts of untapped energy potential,” says senior research analyst Mackinnon Lawrence. “The escalation in waste generation presents policy makers with a difficult choice: either expand existing landfill capacity (an unappealing, but low-cost option in many areas) or invest in new waste-to-energy capacity, which can reduce the overall volume of waste that must be dumped.”
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