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? Sánchez: Leap to the frying pan?
Posted on March 23, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsSánchez: Leap to the frying pan? | Sun.Star.
Stay firm and ban the bags. Don’t let erroneous reasons like they cost less to make and use less water. That is the issue all plastic manufactures take as they have no argument for the disposal problems of plastic. So they try to divert the argument to another direction. Plastic is not biodegradable and will cause problems for 100’s of years. We just don’t need the problems they cause. Paper biodegrades in a few months and is gone. It is that simple.
The article cited how well it works in the USA etc, well it doesn’t work in the USA, they have large plastic bag problems too and there is an increasing movement to ban bags there too. Disposable plastic items a problem everywhere, Australia, USA, UK, Philippines, African countries and more. Consumers will readily switch to reusable bags after a couple of weeks. In Italy after 12 months after a ban, 80% of the people when asked said they did not want to see plastic bags again. Bag companies that claim they will be hard done by are in an ideal position to switch to manufacturing a new type of reusable bag and capture the market again instead of spending a lot of legal fees fighting what is going to be inevitable soon.
We cannot continue with this 1970’s attitude of manufactures irresponsibly making whatever product they like irregardless of the consequences on our environment. It has to be amore synergistic approach with manufactures involved in the disposal/recycling issues of their products. Only then will we be able to attain a sustainable lifestyle
Quelylya says:
Post Author April 7, 2012 at 4:02 amMy Dear Friend Mr K.A. Elango,Fantastic Post, Thank you for writing aeerwnass posts like this. Hope I am expecting like this..!Lets start from Us to avoid plastic bags while shoping. I used bio-degradable bags only- (Some Shopping Malls in Abu Dhabi).Wishing you, Family and ur blog follwers/Readers, a HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011.With Wishes,Sai Gokulakrishna.