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? DIRECTIVE (EU) 2015/720 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT as regards reducing the consumption of lightweight plastic carrier bags
Posted on June 8, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsEUR-Lex – 32015L0720 – EN – EUR-Lex.
Item 18 Some plastic carrier bags are marked as ‘oxo-biodegradable’ or ‘oxo-degradable’ by their manufacturers. In such bags, additives are incorporated into conventional plastics. Due to the presence of those additives, the plastic fragments over time into small particles which remain in the environment. It can thus be misleading to refer to such bags as ‘biodegradable’ as they may not be a solution to littering and may, on the contrary, increase pollution. The Commission should examine the impact of the use of oxo-degradable plastic carrier bags on the environment and present a report to the European Parliament and the Council, including, if appropriate, a set of measures to limit their consumption or to reduce any harmful impacts.
Yet another case where by oxodegradable plastics are shown to not be biodegradable and causing more harm to the environment than good.
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