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? Fashion planet: Biodegradability
Posted on April 18, 2012 by DrRossH in Landfills and Disposalhttp://www.thevine.com.au/fashion/news/fashion-planet-_-biodegradability-20120411.aspx
People often get degradable and biodegradable confused. Degradable is a chemical reaction whereby the plastic fragments into lots of little pieces. These can blow around the environment and get into water ways and make of an environmental problem.
Biodegradable is, as you pointed out, a biological process that breaks the plastic molecules down to basic constituents of biomass and biogas. In oxygen conditions the gas is CO2 and in anaerobic conditions the gas is methane. If collected, this can be used to generate power with CO2 emissions. An increasing number of landfills are moving to this set up.
Also as you righty pointed out, reduce our consumption and recycle are the best options to use to control plastic waste. After that biodegradation or incineration (where the energy is claimed back in industrial waste to energy power stations)are the next best options.
If the plastic was made with a landfill-biodegradable additive in the first place, then it would not matter whether it was recycled or incinerated or discarded to landfills, as then all bases are covered with respect to the elimination of the accumulation of plastic waste. We call this the Backstop method for plastics.
Discussion · No Comments
There are no responses to "Fashion planet: Biodegradability". Comments are closed for this post.Oops! Sorry, comments are closed at this time. Please try again later.