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? Europe’s supermarket shelves packed with ‘misleading’ claims about recycled plastic packaging
Posted on January 28, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingManufacturers use method that labels plastic as ‘circular’ and climate-friendly, despite being mostly fossil-based
Aramco’s petrochemical subsidiary, Sabic, along with other big players, devised a successful way to rebrand their harmful business as “planet saver”. They label plastic as “circular” and climate-friendly, although in practice it remains almost entirely fossil-based, exacerbating global warming and the plastic crisis.
Under industry pressure, Europe is on track to legalise this practice, which independent experts have described as greenwashing, with lax EU rules set to take effect in 2026 and similar UK regulations to be enforced as of 2027.
To promote so-called sustainable plastic, the petrochemical industry is pushing pyrolysis, the most common type of chemical recycling. This highly energy- and carbon-intensive process converts plastic waste into recycled feedstock: pyrolysis oil. This hazardous compound, however, can make up at most 5% of total feedstock and must be diluted with 95% virgin naphtha, a petroleum derivative, to avoid damaging the steam-cracking plants that turn the input into new plastic.
“The whole process is labelled as plastic recycling, while fossil fuel use expands because virgin feedstock must be added,” said Helmut Maurer, a former senior expert in the environment department of the European Commission.
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