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? Call for urgent overhaul of Australia’s monitoring of ‘astronomical’ plastic pollution – Australia
Posted on February 18, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
The Australian Academy of Science has called for an overhaul of the nation’s approach to studying plastic pollution, warning there is an over-reliance on volunteers and a lack of consistent data to document the “astronomical” problem.
About three-quarters of rubbish along Australia’s coast is plastic, posing a threat to more than 690 marine animals including turtles and seabirds. CSIRO researchers believe 43% of short-tailed shearwater birds in eastern Australia have plastic in their gut.
There have been major surveys of plastic pollution on beaches, including the Australian Marine Debris Initiative and the CSIRO’s international research partnership. But the academy is calling for more regular surveys that have a consistent approach and are collated in a national plastic pollution database.
“To stop pollution effectively you need to know its source, and knowing what leaks into the environment and its origins is critical for that,” said Prof Chennupati Jagadish, the president of the Australian Academy of Science.
“Just as we have national monitoring systems for emissions, outdoor air quality, and wastewater for drugs or Covid, it should be possible to identify some points to measure the amount of plastics entering our waterways to get a more complete and regular picture.”
Industry needs to be accountable for the plastic rubbish their products cause. IT woudl mean they woudl charge higher prices for their products but at least then we are starting to pay the real cost of a product.
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