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? Paring back plastic-bag use BC Canada
Posted on April 27, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsParing back plastic-bag use | Local News | Squamish Chief, Squamish, BC.
As often happens and is encouraged by an unscrupulous oxodegradable industry, degradable is confused with biodegradable. Degradable bags are made from a plastic with an additive in it, that in the presence of air, causes an internal chemical reaction to go on in between the plastic molecules. It has nothing to do with biodegradable. The chemical reaction causes the plastic to fragment down into little pieces. Then you have the worse problem of little pieces of plastic blowing all over the place. Buried in a landfill this reaction does not go on and the plastic bag does not even break down. Oxo additives should be banned as they make either no difference or a worse problem.
Biodegradable is as it sounds is breaking down by biological activity. A very different and much more beneficial process. Biodegradation of bioplastics can occur in a compost facility if you can collect the compostable plastics and then find a commercial compost facility. Not an easy thing to do.
Landfill-biodegradable plastics are conventional plastics that have an additive in them that allow them to biodegrade when buried in a landfill. Unlike oxodegradable plastics above, landfill biodegradable plastics can be mainstream recycled. AS over 80% of our plastic waste goes to a landfill, this is the option that makes the most common sense.
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