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? What is so great about PLA? (The plastic made from corn)
Posted on December 20, 2011 by DrRossH in BioPlasticsAs posted on a Linked-In discussion group recently.
PLA products are made from food. They are compostable ONLY in an industrial composting facility and that is now questionable and certainly NOT IN A HOME COMPOSTER. They are physically weak, cannot be recycled with any other plastics, cause problems in professional composting facilities and have to be “fished out” manually because they do not usually decompose properly in the real world, prices are between 2 and 3 times more expensive than conventional products,
PLA products have an unpleasant odour that makes them unsuitable for many food contact applications. Making plastic from GM food to pack food in is morally wrong when one thinks about the food criis in many countries and the millions suffering continual hunger.
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