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? Waste to energy: Lessons from Japan
Posted on September 16, 2021 by DrRossH in Landfills and DisposalThere is one major exception, however: Japan. In the early 2000s, gasification and the less commonly used pyrolysis processes together had a market share of over 50% in the waste-to-energy sector. While this has now fallen to an estimated 25- 30%, Japan’s waste industry would still be inconceivable without gasification plants.
Japan’s preference for gasification is a result of its geography. Large parts of the island nation are so densely populated that there is extremely limited scope for building landfill sites, where the residual waste from thermal recycling could be disposed of. In addition to a very strict separation and recycling regime, gasification is therefore a key lever in Japan’s waste management strategy in order to minimise the use of landfill.
No bottom ash would appear to be attractive for this method.
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