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? Singled out for small portions A Environmental Disaster
Posted on November 23, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSingled out for small portions | Markets | Packaging News | Jobs | Production | Design | Innovation.
While manufacturers often cite the rise in demand of single serve packets as their excuse to make more of them, it is the other way around. This is called Manufactured Demand, where the manufactures first create something then market it to people telling them it fits their lifestyle. (Bottled water is the classic example of this, where the bottling companies made a product then conned consumers into believing their “mountain fresh water’ was better for them than the city water and charged them 1000’s of percent more).
The rise in single serve packets with each one wrapped in its own plastic packet is an environmental disaster. It is irresponsible manufacturing to make a single serve packet that lasts a few minutes, in a plastic material that will last 100’s of years thereafter. Many of these single serve packets are not recyclable either with the move to the Tetra pack style packet. (Another environmental disaster). If manufacturers had to pay a ‘packaging recovery fee’ to cover the correct disposal of their waste products, then it would be interesting to see who jumps on the single serve bandwagon as single serve packets would have much higher fees to pay.
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