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? Tasmanian govt expands use of recycled materials in roads – Australia
Posted on August 2, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Recycling“The new plant incorporates cutting edge technology that supports production of road surfacing material with a high proportion of recyclable material,” he said. “Reconophalt is a…road surfacing product developed by Downer incorporating material that would otherwise end up in landfill. That includes soft plastics, ground glass from domestic recycling, road millings and recycled asphalt paving and waste toner. As well as producing a robust road surfacing product, we are helping communities turn their waste products into value-added material and avoiding use of virgin materials.”
Since 2018, Downer has laid 10,397t of Reconophalt in Tasmania in diversion from landfill of:
- 6,476,000 plastic bag equivalents;
- Toner from 189,000 toner cartridges;
- 2,629,000 glass bottles; and
- 960 tonnes of recycled asphalt paving material.
We should not kid ourselves that this is recycling. It is not, it is a one more reuse and that is the end of life for that plastic. Recycling by definition is to be able to reuse the material to be able to make more of similar products. That way we are displacing use of virgin materials. Example, if 1 million plastic bags are made and used in road making on their disposal, then we still have to use virgin materials to make the next 1 million bags. This is not recycling, it is not a circular economy.
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