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? Australian states seek federal ban on plastic bags
Posted on July 28, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastics News – Australian states seek federal ban on plastic bags.
The politics in Australia make it very difficult to get any legislation through. They have a federal government and each state has its own state government. The federal government and the state governments tend to be opposite parties. If the federal goes to Labour (democrat), the states move to Liberal (republican). Hence partisan politics tend to dominate, what the federal govt ties to do the states oppose it out of spite, little to do with is it good for the state or not. So getting laws like this passed is very difficult whether it is good for the country or not. Even at the state level, there are cases where 90% of the voters want these type environmental benefitting laws passed, but the state government doesn’t pass it due to partisan politics and corporate lobbying funds.
Banning plastic bags is a necessary move for the Australian environment and resource protection. There is a parallel bill in federal government to put a container deposit law in place offering a 10 cent refund on any containers. Yet the Liberal states are opposing it all the while this has very wide scale public support.
It is not clear, even to many government people, what the states powers and limitations are and what the federal governments powers are. This makes it convenient for politicians to pass the blame on to someone else for their inaction.
All the while it is the general public who lose out on the benefits if these type laws were to get passed.
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