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? Packaging plays important part in resource efficiency loop – UK
Posted on November 10, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsFinally glad to read about someone who understands what their packaging ought to be doing other than protecting food during transit. Having packaging made of simple to recycle materials not less common (less recyclable )materials or composite laminate that are very hard to recycle is important. For packaging that is unlikely to be recycled, then consider making it landfill-biodegradable (not to be confused with degradable), or incinerable for WTE plants.
If we can get recycling of packaging over 80% then the need to import virgin materials and be beholden to the whims of the exporting countries would be considerably relieved. This would be good for the UK or any country. It would lead to business stability, less foreign expenditure, more money being spent internally which means more jobs for the economy.
We just have to incentivise manufacturers to think like this and not just what is cheapest for them to do right now. A plastics tax of the use of virgin resin would do this for example. That is a simple to implement scheme that would have long term beneficial effects throughout the industry.
At the consumer level, make all the grocery stores have to take packaging back. That seems only right, if they want to sell food in packaging they ought to provide bins and the logistics to take it back. Getting waste packaging back from the extremely widely dispersed public back to central points is the most expensive part in the recycling chain. There after it is easy to fill a truck load to ship in bulk back to processing stations. Therefore if every grocery store would accept back packaging that makes it very convenient for consumers to drop it off thereby doing this hard part of the recycling stream for free. Having a few special drop off points at recycle centres like we have now has been proven to not work for many years now. It has got to be very easy for the public otherwise it will not happen.
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