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? Non-degradable products: Plastic bags posing environmental hazards – The Express Tribune
Posted on January 28, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsNon-degradable products: Plastic bags posing environmental hazards – The Express Tribune.
ISLAMABAD: The increasing prevalence of plastic use is not only adding to the municipal waste of the city but also causing environment hazards as the environmental regulatory body has failed to enforce its regulations.
On April 1, 2013, the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) notified a regulation prohibiting manufacture, import, sale and use of non-degradable plastic products and other plastic materials in the country, including in the limits of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), but due to a weak enforcement mechanism, its sale and use is consistently on the rise across the country.
The use of oxo bags to control an environmental problem is a fallacy. The oxo additive mentioned above causes the bags that are left out in the open to fragment down to little pieces of plastic. The claim they then biodegrade is unfounded and should not be made. it is the salespeople selling bags that make these false claims trying to sell more bags. They would appear to put their pocket book before the environment of the country they live in. An oxo bag will not even fragment if covered in a landfill as there it gets deprived of sunlight and oxygen both of which are needed for the fragmentation process to work.
The claim that many western countries use oxo as a means to control plastic bags in the environment is wrong. Many of these countries are banning oxo bags in reality as they are so bad for the environment.
The real solution is to do as the govt tried to do which is to ban plastic bags and encourage the use of the cotton ones.
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