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? Rahm pushes for tax on plastic bags – Chicago
Posted on October 12, 2016 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsChicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to add another layer to the city’s plastic bag ban – a 7-cent tax – despite the ban’s unintended, harmful consequences.
Source: Rahm pushes for tax on plastic bags
As part of his 2017 budget introduced Oct. 11, Emanuel is proposing adding a 7-cent tax on plastic bags used in the city. This is an extension of an ordinance that went into effect in 2015 that put restrictions on the use of plastic bags.
Under the first phase of this ordinance, which went into effect Aug. 1, 2015, chain stores and franchises over 10,000 square feet are banned from using standard thin plastic bags to carry groceries in, and are required to provide reusable bags instead. These requirements expanded to all chains and franchises within the city under the second phase of the ordinance, which went into effect Aug. 1, 2016. Any store that violates the ordinance could face a fine of $100-500.
After stating the above, this author started rambling on about how plastic bags were more environmentally friendly which is not true at all. Then how this was imposing unfair taxes on people who had enough taxes on them already. This is not a tax as you don’t have to pay it! Bring your own bag and you don’t pay for a plastic bag. As simple as that. Clearly this author was aligned with the bag manufacturers who could care less about Chicago and the Great lakes, and only their pocket book.
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