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? The Need for a Container Deposit Scheme
Posted on December 30, 2011 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsA CDS or Container Deposit Scheme is a very successful program where it has been introduced. In Australia and internationally. Just this morning I picked up 8 bottles in a 200 m stretch. It just shows the magnitude of the problem and if nothing is done about it, it will just get worse as summer comes and more bottles are manufactured. While it is a litter problem the manufacturers are not innocent of this problem either. They knowingly producing a product that will end up as litter in a significant way. A CDS is the only effective way to prevent this. It puts a small onus on the manufacturer to have some financial responsibility for the products they make and incentivises the public to pick up the bottles for a refund. That is a win-win situation.
This argument from the Australian Food and Beverage Council about reducing curb side efficiency is absolutely incorrect. It will increase curb side efficiency as there will be less bottles in the collection to pick up. This makes curb side pickups more efficient as they can take more of other recyclate on the same trip. Less fuel is used to get it all to the recycle centre, less landfill space is used, less materials are used to make fewer new bottles, less water is used to make fewer new bottles, less energy is used to make fewer new bottles, less CO2 is emitted to make fewer new bottles.
http://www.ben-global.com/Main/News/8986.aspx
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