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: killer of the seas
Posted on May 18, 2016 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife
When researchers examined the stomach contents of 13 sperm whales that washed up on Germany’s North Sea coast this year, they discovered further compelling evidence of how plastic waste plays havoc with the environment both on land and at sea.
Source: Plastic: killer of the seas
When researchers examined the stomach contents of 13 sperm whales that washed up on Germany’s North Sea coast this year, they discovered further compelling evidence of how plastic waste plays havoc with the environment both on land and at sea.
The guts of the stranded giants were stuffed with plastic. According to the experts, the whales were probably forced into shallow waters by unusual weather patterns shifting their food sources.
After straying into the shallows, the whales could not support their own body weight; their internal organs collapsed and the creatures died of heart failure.
Plastic rubbish festoons our oceans. By 2050, it is forecast to grow fivefold to equal the weight of all fish life. And each piece of waste remains adrift for centuries.
Researchers are only beginning to realise the long-term consequences of this man-made but entirely preventable danger.
And after more than a decade of procrastination, Australia’s most populous state has pushed forward plans to tackle the recovery of empty plastic bottles. Despite industry objections over cost, NSW is joining South Australia and the Northern Territory in running a container deposit scheme. It rolls out from July next year. Other states are under pressure to follow suit.
It is hard to believe people still think like some of these commenters do. They’ve completely ignored the away from home consumption of drinks which is far larger than the at home consumption. This is where all most all the litter comes from. Lazy people. Even then for the away from home consumption most of that goes into a rubbish bin to go to a landfill. About 70% of the material for drink containers goes to landfill. That is then lost for ever. A CDS will bring all this back into circulation. Companies like Coke will be forced to consider remaking their bottes from this rather than spending our funds over seas to buy more virgin plastic material all the time. What we have now is ludicrous and for people who don’t understand to come out with big bold statements like that is not the best thing to do. We need a CDS so bad. It will solve so many problems quite simply. There is no down side of it, other than make people realise what a huge problem we really have once they see the mountains of plastic bottles coming back once they 10 cents starts.
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