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? Bottler of an idea to contain street litter – Victoria Australia
Posted on April 4, 2016 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsOPINION: Former Premier Denis Napthine says Victoria should introduce a container deposit scheme.
via Bottler of an idea to contain street litter.
Currently Australians consume drinks from 15 billion containers each year. However only about 40 per cent of these bottles and cans are recycled.
The remaining 60 per cent or 9 billion drink containers each year end up in landfills or as unwanted litter on our roadsides,in our waterways or scattered as an ugly blight across our environment.
While Victorians are quite rightly proud of their recycling achievements, clear evidence from overseas and South Australia demonstrates that the introduction of a container deposit scheme will provide the incentive needed to significantly boost the recycling of bottles and cans.
Victorians only need to have a real look around their neighbourhood to see discarded bottles and cans in the gutter, on the beach or in the local park to see the benefits of a container deposit scheme.
This was written by the former State Premier who was about to introduce the Cash for Container Scheme as he clearly recognised the benefits it would bring and the big problem it would solve. Unfortunately he was voted out of office last election, a year too early and the scheme was cancelled by the next Labour govt in office. We wonder why they would do that?
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