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? Why Papier-Mettler pulled out of planned infrastructure investment – Australia
Posted on January 24, 2024 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingWhich brings us to Papier-Mettler. The family-run German company was founded in 1957 by Hans Georg Mettler as a paper wholesaler business
Source: Why Papier-Mettler pulled out of planned infrastructure investment – Inside Waste
“The sustainability and the success of recycling schemes depends on these end markets,” said the spokesperson. “Without them, recycling just isn’t viable long-term – economically and ecologically.
This correlation proved to be true once again just recently in Australia, in the form of the collapse of aRedCycle. The lack of a sustainable end market caused the scheme to be unable to process the amounts of collected material. Further, the competitiveness of the end product in the free market was not a given.
“Currently, there’s no industry-scale collection program and recycling capacity for LDPE soft plastics,” he said. “There remains a very small amount of recycling capacity for LDPE film waste (around 15,000 metric tonnes, where more than 300,000 tonnes are actually required,) with most of the LDPE material sent off-shore through waste export ban exemptions.
“Globally, we are striving for circularity. We want to be part of the solution. Organisations like Papier-Mettler need the support of policy makers and government in ensuring end markets not only exist but are actively created and sustained for long-term viability of investments and a truly circular economy for plastics. Without an economically and ecologically viable solution to process soft plastic waste onshore into competitive products, the dream of a true circular economy for plastics just cannot come true.”
It is a pity that companies like this cannot make it as there is no support in Australia. We should not however allow single use items to be made and say it is ok as most will get recycled. That is the wrong way to look at the problem of plastic waste.
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