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? Huggies, TerraCycle launch Diaper Packaging Brigade – Canada
Posted on June 12, 2013 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsHuggies, TerraCycle launch Diaper Packaging Brigade
Do we really think 2 cents is going to make much of a difference? It is good for the company to grandstand to make this big press release, but all the hype aside it this going to do anything really?
One could argue that it is a start for the manufacturers who make these disposable plastic items to start to at least acknowledge that their products are a large environmental problem and they have to be responsible for their disposal as much as the user is. Extended Producer Responsibility is what we need to mandate.
There are a number of options these companies can do that are better than 2 cents. Firstly however, if 1 in 5 families are struggling to buy a luxury item like a disposable diaper then perhaps they should not be using them but using reusable nappies.
These manufacturers should be redesigning their products so that not all the diaper is discarded. The outer cover does not get soiled so that could easily be washed and reused. The inner lining should not be a plastic material but a natural biodegradable material. Or at least make that using a landfill biodegradable additive so that it will biodegrade away when it gets to a landfill.
Disposable diapers are a huge problem, #3 item in a landfill. It is time these4 manufacturers got responsible for the pollution and legacy their products are leaving.
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