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? Bioplastics aren’t the future, says Potočnik – Europe
Posted on November 10, 2012 by DrRossH in BioPlasticsBioplastics aren’t the future, says Potočnik
The simplest way to get recycling up to very high numbers it to put a value on plastic waste. This could be in the form of a plastic tax put on manufacturers who produce non biodegradable plastics, or a deposit/refund scheme for plastic (albeit it hard to administer considering every shape of plastic packaging in use today.)
For plastic waste, especially waste from one use plastic items, then it is the manufacturers who make these products and the sellers who sell them are responsible for the problems they create. The users are responsible as well, but often they have no alternative choice and have to purchase items in plastic nowadays. If they had non plastic choices then we may be seeing a different situation.
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