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? Soft plastics export exemptions to be wound back as recycling industry pleads to retain waste – Australia
Posted on May 22, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingThe soft plastic recycling industry wants more waste to stay here, saying too much material is being sent overseas.
Australian soft plastics recycling companies are warning that the industry is at a breaking point because too much waste is being sent overseas, pushing up the price locally.
A ban on exporting recyclable waste came into effect from 2021, but the government granted dozens of exemptions to give the recycling industry time to build up capacity.
Now the soft plastics industry says too much product is being exported, both through those legal exemptions and through potential criminal operators selling waste offshore at a higher rate than it can attract in Australia.
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