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? Australia to update plastics marine threat plan – Australia
Posted on October 30, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsThis is far over due. Like most other western countries, the over consumption of disposable plastic items is too high in Australia. We don’t need to use them at all or in their plastic form. There are other options available that are just as easy to use.
It needs to be a balanced committee review as the two big pro industry weights there PACIA and the APC have done a lot of damage to get this kind of discussion underway for many years. They will be wanting to dominate the discussion with the back bone threat of job losses if things are changed. This is of course nonsense. Any industry is intelligent enough to move around to adapt to new ideas and opportunities when they come along.
Australia has a plastics waste problem and it is very dire for the oceans. Some simple changes could make huge reductions. Cash for containers schemes will reduce plastic bottles dumping by over 4 fold. We’d hardly be able to find a discarded bottle if this law was put into place. Plastic bag bans or impose fees for will also reduce their consumption by 80% in just a few months. Switching to paper straws is another simple change with a huge impact for plastic waste. These are simple changes that industry can adapt to in a few months. Does the government have the courage to do them will be the question or will it be yet another round of multi year studies and trials that show the same result as we know now.
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