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? WinCup’s phade PHA straws are gamechangers – USA
Posted on June 12, 2024 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsThe phade straws manufactured by food service ware manufacturer WinCup look, feel and perform like regular plastic straws. There, however, the resemblance ends. Made from the biopolymer PHA, these straws completely biodegrade in any environment where bacteria is present. They also mark the turning point in WinCup’s transition to a more sustainable product portfolio.
Source: WinCup’s phade PHA straws are gamechangers | Sustainable Plastics
Laporte and Winters had never seen a substrate that could do what PHA claimed to do, and at first, were highly sceptical.
“Brad and I decided we would ‘test this thing to the nth degree’ – which we did. When the results came in from test lab OWS we were astounded. The speed with which the products broke down was amazing, and test after test came back with the final reports stating the products had completely biodegraded,” said Winters.
Their disbelief, however, was hard to shake. They therefore had additional marine disintegration testing carried out to ensure no microplastics remained in the water following the degradation of the PHA, and even set up their own fish tank with saltwater and fish in it.
“We wanted to see with our own eyes whether this stuff would actually vanish in a marine environment. When it did, after 58 days in the fish tank, we were finally able to accept the data and what we were seeing,” he explained.
The company started exploring the PHA market and ultimately selected Danimer Scientific, a Georgia-headquarted company that produces PHA through the microbial fermentation of canola oil, as its PHA supplier.
Eighteen months later, in 2020, the phade straw, made from 100% PHA, was launched.
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