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? ‘Take your s*** from Indonesia’: Australia accused of smuggling waste to East Java
Posted on April 30, 2019 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsEnvironmentalists in Indonesia claim that among the thousands of tonnes of paper bales sent to East Java are household waste items including faeces-contaminated nappies.
Source: ‘Take your s*** from Indonesia’: Australia accused of smuggling waste to East Java
“Actually, according to the rules in Indonesia, plastic waste should not exceed 2 per cent of the weight of used paper imported,”
“But in fact, up to November 2018 almost 30 per cent of the paper waste we bought contained plastic waste.”
Ecoton claims it found plastic waste, including food wrappers, plastic bottles, nappies and other non-recyclable plastics, among the waste paper, some of which was labelled “Made in Australia”.
The West cannot continue to send its rubbish over seas for other people to deal with. We have to deal with our waste. Dealing with it can comprise of using less, or recycle and remanufacture other in-demand products to displace the use of virgin plastic. Or use a different material. Western countries have for far too long been shirking their responsibilities for the waste they make. We need to reorganise our waste management to deal with our waste internally. It will mean higher costs which is why any government has been to scared to tackle it. But we are now just learning the costs of not doing it and it will cost us a lot more now to adjust our economies.
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