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? 
New research eats through plastic waste – USA
Posted on May 3, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
Scientists in Texas are working on a variant of an enzyme that can break down plastic in mere days. The discovery of this enzyme by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin could help with environmental pollution by converting plastics waste into usable material, thus helping to clear out packed landfills and oceanic waste.
The enzymatic process is a circular one and focuses on breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its constituent parts and then putting them back together again into new material. Some plastics were broken down using the enzyme in only 24 hours, compared to the many hundreds of days it would take without the enzyme, which the researchers are calling FAST-PETase (functional, active, stable and tolerant PETase).
This could help in the disposal of residual plastic waste that is inevitably going to be around on considerable amounts for many years to come. Biogone is pushing this too as they know a circular economy is not going to be fully circular and other responsible disposal means are going to be necessary.
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