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? Local food entrepreneurs take on Big Food in Australia
Posted on April 26, 2014 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsOne of the big problems of a supermarket which was touched upon by one of the commenters above is the amount of plastic that the food in supermarkets is packaged in. It is shocking. Walk down any isle and look at the plastic packaging. It is hard to find an item not in plastic nowadays. Packaging only has a useful life of getting the item from the manufacturer to the consumer then its useful life is over but its actual life will last 100’s of years more somewhere. 100’s of years of pollution for a few months if that of use. To make it worse, look at how items are shipped to the supermarkets. This involves secondary and tertiary layers of plastic wrapping just to get the plastic packaged item onto the shelf. Then to top it off the supermarkets give it to you in a plastic bag to take home. A journey of one hour or less typically and we have another collection of plastic items that will last many 100’s of years. Yet when challenged the supermarkets claim sustainability. This is exactly what they are not. They have become this monstrosity of a waste plastic generator and their legacy today will be with our great great great grandchildren to still be dealing with. This is a very irresponsible business model and one that needs to be avoided. Most food (in big cities at least) is now available from markets where each item is not wrapped in plastic. The supermarket food is picked weeks before it is ripe and has no taste as the sugars do not form as they were meant to. Try a farmers market apple. In fresh markets, you can still see the actual food item without peering through plastic film. You can use paper bags or better still bring your own bags. Once people take their blinders off and really understand the large problems that supermarkets are making it is a big incentive to avoid them. Plastic packaging is going to come back to bite us and like global warming, when it does it will be so hard to then correct the problem as it will be such a large widespread problem on land and in the oceans knowing no boundaries.
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