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? Plastic bans, EPR laws not going away
Posted on April 9, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsPlastics News – Plastic bans, EPR laws not going away.
This is a great but brief summary of where the plastics industry needs to go.
ExtendedProducer Resposibility. i.e producers have to accept resposibility for the waste and litter their products are making. They need to be actively involved in ways to get the waste products back to recycling centers and then remanufactured into new products, not use new resin all the time and ignore the pollution excessive use of new resources their products cause.
Hansen said industry could help its own cause through greater use of recycled content in its products. “The industry could make a lot of friends if they do that.”
“The bans on plastic bags, polystyrene, BPA, chemicals and other resins are going to continue,” she said. “It’s not going to stop despite industry efforts.”
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