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? Should the UK have more energy from waste plants? | The Big Question
Posted on May 13, 2012 by DrRossH in Landfills and DisposalA big focus should be on manufactured items to reduce waste overall. The cost of making packaging is worn by the manufacturers (and passed on) at the moment but no cost of disposal at all. This cost should be part of the overall purchasing equation cost so that consumers, through their purchasing decisions, have a say in disposal costs of manufactured items.
Items like diapers and tetra packs would then have a more realistic price than the false cost they have now.
Then incineration with appropriate scrubbing would be used to reclaim their energy rather than losing it.
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