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? EAC’s stance on bag levy attracts diverse responses
Posted on February 12, 2014 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting Regulationshttp://www.mrw.co.uk/news/mps-bag-levy-criticism-divides-industry/8658695.article
The Industry Council for research on Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN) supported the EAC’s conclusion that exemptions for biodegradable and paper bags would confuse shoppers and said that if a charge had to be introduced, it should be applied to all bag types”
They are correct, all the bags should have a levy. 5 cents is too low too. Ireland did 15 cents. There are just too many false claims in the market place about biodegradable bags. it will be too confusing for the consumer who does not understand much of the science behind biodegradation at all.
Compostable bags are no good for consumers as the consumers cannot get them to a commercial compost facility, they would more than likely throw them in the trash to go to landfill where they will not Biodegrade.
Oxodegradable is not applicable at all. This is worse for the environment. This causes a bag to fragment into lots of little bits of plastic that then blow and flow around the environment. And this process takes 18-24 or more months so having to wait that long for the bag to break down is a terrible suggestion.
So yes put the levy on them all. If so bags do get to biodegrade that is good, but overall it is best to reduce the amount of bags that are used. We do not need them.
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