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? 
Landfilled Plastics Could Power 5.2 Million U.S. Households – Waste Mangagement World
Posted on April 2, 2012 by DrRossH in Landfills and Disposal
Landfilled Plastics Could Power 5.2 Million U.S. Households – Waste Mangagement World.
Although in the U.S. plastics are made primarily from natural gas, the study says that a growing number of technologies are being deployed in Europe, Canada and Asia that effectively turn non-recycled plastics into crude oil, electricity and other fuels.
In 2008 the amount of NRP (Non recycled) plastics landfilled in the United States in 2008 was estimated at 28.8 million tons (26.1 million tonnes). The chemical energy contained in this material was 807 trillion Btu – equivalent to 139 million barrels of oil or 36.7 million tons (33.3 million tonnes) of coal.
“Plastics have a significantly higher energy value than coal,” explains professor Marco J. Castaldi of the Earth and Environmental Engineering Department of Columbia University and associate director of EEC
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