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-free Panaji soon? – India
Posted on July 7, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsPlastic-free Panaji soon? – The Times of India.
The two comments in this article by the salesman of the oxodegradable product need some extra information for the readers to understand.
1) The oxo additive will only degrade when the bags are in the open such as a litter environment. If they get buried in a landfill and deprived of oxygen the bags will not degrade but sit for 100’s of years like a conventional plastic bag. Is that what we want?. Degrade means break down into little fragments of plastic due to internal chemical reactions.. It is not referring to biodegradation. That is a separate process that needs to occur under the presence of bio-organisms.
2) There is a claim that the plastic fragments will biodegrade. This is questionable. The d2w certification of biodegradation was a self certification and that claim has been questioned by the UK government department DAFRA in their report on oxodegradable additives the UK. The above salesman says that the plastic will break down to 5000 Daltons or less. That is a chain of carbon atoms only 125 atoms long. The practicality of the additive being spread so evenly to be able to interact at that tiny level is again questionable. The claim of biodegradation without having incubating the plastic at high temperatures (temperatures the bag would not see in the environment) is not proven or shown either.
3) One of the premier researchers of oxo degradable plastics say the could only be recycled if their concentration was small compared to the other plastic concentration. This is so that the oxo additive does not impact the new products otherwise they could start to degrade too. There is no practical way a person at a recycling plant has the time or the knowledge of what bag is oxo degradable and what is not. So there will be no control of the concentration of oxo additives going into the recycle center as said there needs to be, and this is a problem for oxo plastics.
4) The comment about the bags ‘degrading at the end of their useful life’ is always quoted by these salesmen. Consider the bags are made in one location and shipped to another then distributed out to all the different users. It is not practical for the manufacturer to know what the use ful life of a bag is going to be for different types of users. Some may only use the bag for 5 minutes. Others may use it for 2 years. This type of comment is pure salesmanship and very misleading to any reader. It is misinforming them about the real limitations of the oxo degradable plastic. They should be more honest and say the bag has been designed to break down in 24 months or 18 months, whatever they design the bag too. Plus write that date on the bag. Then people would really know how long the bag is good for.
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