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? 
MCS joins 150 organisations backing call to ban oxo-degradable plastic packaging | Marine Conservation Society
Posted on November 1, 2020 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsOxo-degradable plastic packaging, including carrier bags, is often marketed as a solution to plastic pollution, with claims that such plastics degrade into harmless residues ranging from a few months to several years.
However, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, has said there is significant evidence to suggest that oxo-degradable plastics do not degrade into harmless residues, but instead fragment into tiny pieces of plastic thereby contributing to microplastic pollution and posing a risk to the ocean and other ecosystems, potentially for decades to come.
We should be searching for ways to reduce our plastic usage and working towards a more sustainable circular economy instead of creating new ways of manufacturing single use plastic products.
Dr Sue Kinsey,
MCS Senior Pollution Policy Officer
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