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? Plastic & Wildlife Archives - Plastic Waste Solutions
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Posted on March 9, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife
Source As millions of tonnes a year of microplastic waste mounts in marine environments, Flinders University scientists warn the ramifications to wildlife, food webs and human health are still little understood. An Environmental Pollution
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Oops, cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was probably a bad idea
Posted on April 20, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife, Plastic Waste NewsSource Many scientists worry that flashy efforts to clean plastic from the ocean do more harm than good. Some scientists think that cleaning up the open ocean is a futile, and perhaps even harmful, endeavor. Several marine biologists told Vox that...
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Mussels suffer from ingesting plastic – Australia
Posted on March 29, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic & WildlifeSource Mussels in Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne are ingesting microscopic pieces of plastic used in cosmetics. And it’s affecting their ability to grow and reproduce, an RMIT University eco-toxicologist has found. The microplastics travel from our bathroom sinks to the...
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World’s biggest plastic producers join call for UN treaty fighting plastic pollution in oceans
Posted on October 16, 2020 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife, Plastic Waste NewsSource: World’s biggest plastic producers join call for UN treaty fighting plastic pollution in oceans The push comes as a report highlights how discarded plastic equivalent to the weight of about 60,000 blue whales are dumped into Continue reading this entry →
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There’s plastic in your prawns, UQ research reveals – Australia
Posted on August 18, 2020 by DrRossH in Plastic & WildlifeSource: There's plastic in your prawns, UQ research reveals We found polyvinyl chloride — a widely used synthetic plastic polymer — in all samples we tested, but the most common plastic in use today — polyethylene — was the highest...
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Microplastics are probably in your diet. But should you be worried?
Posted on September 17, 2019 by DrRossH in Plastic & WildlifeYou've probably got microplastics in your poo. They were found in the stool samples of all eight participants of a study published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The eight healthy adults from Europe, Russia and Japan had between 18...
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The Rubbish Revolution – Australia
Posted on April 15, 2019 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife, Plastic Waste NewsSource: The Rubbish Revolution It’s the rubbish triathalon and it’s sweeping across Melbourne, leaving nothing in its wake, except pristine streets, parks, waterways and beaches. The participants are out there on foot, in kayaks and in weighted wetsuits, picking up...
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Microplastics Found In 100 Percent Of Sea Turtles Tested
Posted on December 9, 2018 by DrRossH in Plastic & WildlifeScientists recently studied seven species of turtles across three different oceans and found that all individuals – every single one – had microplastics in Source: Microplastics Found In 100 Percent Of Sea Turtles Tested Scientists recently studied seven species of turtles across...
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Trash rivers: these 10 rivers are responsible for most plastic that flows out to the seas
Posted on August 19, 2018 by DrRossH in Plastic & WildlifeJust ten rivers are responsible for up to 95% of all river-borne plastic trash that ends up in the sea. Silver lining: cleaning them up would have a huge positive impact. Source: Trash rivers: these 10 rivers are responsible...
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There\’s about five trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans – let\’s tally them up
Posted on July 9, 2018 by DrRossH in Plastic & Wildlife, Plastic StrawsA global citizen science project launched in Sydney aims to count and record some of the five trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans. Source: There\'s about five trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans – let\'s tally them...
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