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? PET turmoil exposes the gap between recycling goals and market reality – Plastics News
Posted on May 22, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingA wave of PET recycling plant closures, rising imports and recent resin price spikes are exposing the growing gap between the plastics industry’s circular economy ambitions and the economic realities needed to sustain domestic recycling.
Source: PET turmoil exposes the gap between recycling goals and market reality – Plastics News
Those efforts matter because the industry’s credibility increasingly depends on whether it can deliver practical, economically viable recycling systems — not just sustainability rhetoric.
The PET market now finds itself squeezed between two competing realities: sustainability ambitions on one side and global market economics on the other.
The industry says it wants more recycled content. Consumers increasingly expect it. Legislators are mandating it. Yet low-cost imported virgin and recycled PET continue to pressure domestic recyclers already operating on thin margins. Meanwhile, collection rates in the United States have remained stubbornly stuck around 30 percent for years.
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