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 Has A Big Carbon Footprint — But That Isn’t The Whole Story
Posted on July 13, 2019 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource: Plastic Has A Big Carbon Footprint — But That Isn’t The Whole Story
Plastic waste gets a lot of attention when photos of dead whales with stomachs full of plastic bags hit the news. Pieces of plastic also litter cities, and tiny plastic particles are even floating in the air.
Largely overlooked is how making plastic in the first place affects the environment, especially global warming. Plastic actually has a big carbon footprint, but so do many of the alternatives to plastic. And that’s what makes replacing plastic a problem without a clear solution.
Plastic is just a form of fossil fuel. Your plastic water bottle, your grocery bag, your foam tray full of cucumbers … they’re all made from oil or natural gas. It takes lots of energy to make that happen.
Evry time the Amercian Chemistry Council (ACC) gets involved the always point to the cost of production of plastic saying it is the best material to use. They will not discuss the disposal side and the huge toll on the environment this causes. When this is taken into account the production side pales in comparison. The ACC know this but will never talk about it as they know their product is a huge problem. They are far more interested in short term profits that thinking about their consequences. Shameful.
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