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? Brisbane Australia to Open Landfill Gas Facility
Posted on July 15, 2011 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsBrisbane will commence a landfill gas operation to turn the city’s waste into electricity. Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk announced that Landfill Gas Industries would build the plant at a remediated landfill site at Willawong in the city’s south and operate it over the next decade with Diamond Energy. The plant will also save Brisbane City Council $80,000 in annual upkeep costs, which would now be borne by the facility’s owners, he said.
Quirk said the site, closed in the 1990s, has underground well and piped gas harvesting systems already in place to release methane created by the rubbish. Electricity will be generated by burning off the methane gas, which is 21 times more environmentally damaging than CO2, to the electricity grid.
“Not that long ago, landfill sites were nothing more than holes in the ground, but now we have a way to turn what was useless waste into a useful energy source,” Quirk said.
Another landfill gas facility at Rochedale has been generating power since 2004 and produces enough renewable electricity each year to power 6,500 homes.
Queensland Greens spokesperson Libby Connors reportedly said Brisbane and Australia are behind the rest of the world.
“Queensland and Brisbane in particular are a long way behind the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) where at least 20 OECD countries are already using this sort of technology,” she said.
She said The Greens have been calling for the Willawong landfill gas plan for 20 years, adding, “It’s interesting the only two plants are here in Brisbane but there are plenty of other opportunities to develop this around the state”.
Waste Management Association of Australia Queensland president Pravin Menon reportedly said Brisbane City Council is pushing forward with good sustainability policy.
“What Brisbane City Council is doing is extremely responsible from an environmental perspective…in actually utilising a resource in the ground that would otherwise add to our environmental impact,” he said.
He said future waste management strategies need to avoid, reuse and divert waste.
“Councils should firstly look at reducing the amount of waste that they send to landfill,” he said.
The plant is due to be operational by June 2012.
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