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 quest to turn back the beach litter tide
Posted on April 15, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsCongratulations to these guys for making this volunteer effort. It is a shame people have to volunteer their valuable time to clean up a mess made by irresponsible manufacturers and careless litterers. We belong to a similar group in Australia www.3207beachpatrol.com.au who meet once a month to clean up one of the beaches in our 3207 post code. There are other groups 3206 and 3184 further down the beach doing the same with similar web addresses. We also work with the local council who has a tractor pulled beach sweep that picks up most of the litter off the beaches once or twice a week as the plastic pollution is so bad on these beaches. The council has implemented no butts (cigarette) and glass on the beach. But it is not enforced so gets ignored. And the tractor can’t go everywhere. We deal with state government too on a limited basis advocating for a bottle deposit scheme to be implemented, but it seems companies like Coca Cola have deep pockets to keep any such laws from being implemented. So this to date has proved quite fruitless to get any changes implemented, but it does force the discussion at this higher political level and hopefully one day the politicians will take a walk along a beach and see the mess their succumbing to lobbying actions by big corporates is making and pass one of these laws.
We need to get the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) more in to the public discussion to put responsible life cycle considerations into packaging design. Currently manufacturing designs are only done for the supply side considerations, nothing on the disposal side. Plastic packaging manufacturers have a greater amount of responsibility to this plastic waste problem as compared to the litters. It is about ‘manufactured demand’ that they create. If a consumer could not get a individual snack serve in a plastic wrapper, only a regular pack of biscuits, they would still litter the packet wrapper possibly, but we would not have all these little individual plastic snack serve wrappers all over the place. The manufactures made a demand for this type of product. Coffey to go with the plastic lids is another example. We have on and off anti littering campaigns and most people are appalled at people who litter. But where is the same pressure for manufacturers? There is none. Essentially manufacturers have been given free license to make whatever packing they want to suit their performance and cost demands. There is little attention paid to what happens to the item after it has finished its purpose. There is a lot that could be done to reduce plastic packaging waste. For example;
1) Why are there so many different types of plastic used for essentially the same task? Why not say if you want to make a meat tray make it from HDPE, no other material. HDPE has highly recyclable where as PP is not so, or Styrofoam etc.
2) Make the manufacturer put the recycle symbol and number on the package. Some do not currently.
3) Impose a non biodegradable plastics tax (like Germany) to encourage companies to use other materials like going back to cardboard. Cardboard is very biodegradable and is still very suitable for the packaging of many items. Just because plastic is cheap to make and is clear to consumers can see the nice product inside does not mean it is the cheapest product when its disposal costs are included. If we had EPR and faced some of the disposal costs, then companies would consider twice, is plastic the best product to use for packaging this product?
4) Limit the size of the serve in the packaging. Nowdays you can get individual snack size plastic pockets, (1 piece of cheese and one cracker). Consequently you see these littered on the ground all over now. Drink companies are producing 250 ml Pet bottles now. Water bottles could be limited to 1.5 litre as the minimum size. That would eliminate a lot of PET bottle litter and PET resource wastage. (Less going to landfill).
5) And more, you don’t have to look to hard at this industry to see simple changes that could be made to have this industry work in harmony with the environment rather than serve their own production only concerns.
Yes it is a change from how manufacturing has been done in the past, and would cause a very large objection from industry, but that doesn’t mean we should be allowed to continue to keep doing the same non sustainable practices just for their benefits. All our benefits should be included in disposable packaging designs as the pollution from their products is affecting us all.
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