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? Pair urges government to classify some plastic waste as hazardous
Posted on February 19, 2013 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsThis has been one of the strong suggestions here at plasticwastesolitions.com. Plastic has a myriad of beneficial uses as far as product manufacturers are concerned because it is very inert and light weight. However it is these exact properties that make it such an environmental hazard. Because it is inert, it does not break down for a long long time. And because it is lightweight it is easily blown and washed around to other environments where it does not belong.
It makes no sense to have a disposable plastic item that has a use of just a few minutes to then be discarded to last 100’s of years as pollution somewhere. This alone should be a strong enough reason to make it classified as a hazardous product. The irresponsible use of plastic being promulgated these days is a real hazard to our future environment. If the regulations and costs of dealing with plastic were much higher we would not have this problem. While most people are not made aware of the problem of plastic waste accumulating on our lands and oceans, it is only a matter of time where the problem is so bad that the quality of our oceans, rivers, parks are so bad that it will be an irreversible problem to fix.
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