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? Styrofoam made Biodegradable
Posted on May 31, 2011 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsMONTREAL StyroChem has launched a material that the firm says is the market’s first biodegradable expandable polystyrene.
Montreal-based StyroChem made EVRgreen-brand EPS commercially available May 30. The firm has completed two successful test runs of the product at its Montreal plant. EVRgreen also can be produced at StyroChem’s plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
“One of the stigmas facing EPS foam has been its lack of biodegradability, and the perception that it takes up a lot of space in landfills, although studies have shown that’s not true,” StyroChem President Glenn Wredenhagen said in a May 26 phone interview.
“With EVRgreen, we think we’ve addressed that question,” he said. “This is something brand new and exciting for EPS.”
EVRgreen is expected to find a home in EPS products that aren’t construction-related. That includes food-service items like cups and bowls, as well as various types of shape packaging. One StyroChem customer already has assembled a marketing campaign that identifies its use of EVRgreen. And Wredenhagen said that a large number of customers also have asked for samples of the material.
EVRgreen “conceivably could go into half of the products made from EPS,” he added. End-product performance also has been unaffected by biodegradability, officials said.
The material uses StyroChem’s EcoPure-brand technology, which incorporates an additive company officials describe as “a catalyst to biodegradation.” The additive interacts with micro-organisms found in landfills to break down the EPS resin at the molecular level.
In testing that simulated a biologically active landfill, EVRgreen has biodegraded at an average of more than 14 percent in less than 140 days.
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