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? Ocean Pollution: 8 Trillion Microbeads a Day from US
Posted on October 6, 2015 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsOcean Pollution: 8 Trillion Microbeads a Day from US : News : Nature World News.
A new analysis of waters around the United States has found that the country is dumping a stunning 8 trillion bits of plastic into oceans and lakes every day. But we’re not talking about irresponsible waste management here. Even eco-friendly citizens could be contributing to this invisible pollution, and just by brushing their teeth!
“We’re facing a plastic crisis and don’t even know it,” Stephanie Green, a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at the College of Science at Oregon State University, said in a statement.
“We’ve demonstrated in previous studies that microplastic of the same type, size and shape as many microbeads can transfer contaminants to animals and cause toxic effects,” she explained.
In other words, microbeads act like sponges for toxins already found in local waters and sewage plants. While the beads themselves pose little harm to birds and fish (unlike larger microplastics) they can serve as delivery systems for the other foul pollutants that wind up in our waters, turning from exfoliaters to poison pills the longer they freely float.
“We argue that the scientific evidence regarding microplastic supports legislation calling for a removal of plastic microbeads from personal care products,”
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