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 plastic waste epidemic
Posted on August 28, 2019 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsAussies are producing more than a tonne of plastic waste per minute. From reducing plastic consumption to learning the proper ways to recycle, here’s how to minimise your environmental footprint.
Source: Australia’s plastic waste epidemic | RoyalAuto | RACV
The Department of the Environment and Energy’s recent Australian Plastics Recycling Survey found that Aussies generated about 2.5 megatonnes of plastic waste in 2016-17. That’s 103 kilograms per capita – one of the highest rates in the developed world.
Learn how to recycle properly
One of the big issues when it comes to recycling plastics is that consumers often get it wrong. There is a misconception, Katie says, that plastics will get sorted at the facility, but this isn’t true. Throwing the wrong kinds of plastics in the recycling bin means you’re contaminating everything else, so it’s all sent to landfill.
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