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’s circular economy stalling: Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence – Australia
Posted on June 24, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingGovernment is stalling in the transition to circular, write Rose Read and John Gertsakis at the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence.
Despite some progress in reducing the environmental impacts, Australia’s circularity rate is still low (4.6 per cent in 2024, compared to the global average of seven per cent), with our Earth overshoot day falling in March.
Progress against the Australian Government’s Circular Economy Framework (2024) and National Policy Waste Action Plan targets is glacial and piecemeal at best, with the deadline for the seven Action Plan targets pushed out a further five years from 2025 to 2030.
There is also little, if any, evidence that the recommendations made by the Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group (2024) have been adopted in a fulsome way.
Discussion · No Comments
There are no responses to "Australia’s circular economy stalling: Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence – Australia". Comments are closed for this post.Oops! Sorry, comments are closed at this time. Please try again later.