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? Study: Chemical recycling better for climate than virgin resin, landfills – USA
Posted on October 14, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingThe CCNY study, however, did not seem to directly compare chemical recycling processes to traditional mechanical recycling technologies.
Other studies have found a lower carbon footprint for mechanical recycling for plastics, vs. chemical recycling.
A late September study from Zero Waste Europe, for example, found that pyrolysis, one of the more common chemical recycling technologies, can have greenhouse gas emissions that are nine times higher than mechanical recycling.
The study noted at one point that there are limits on the number of times a material can be mechanical recycled.
“Since limitations exist and plastic materials that are mechanically recycled several times eventually lead to portions being disposed or combusted, it is imperative to fully understand the technologies and how they are deployed,”
Tt seems that AR is not going to supply many solutions in the upcoming years and landfilling will be with us for many years yet. That is where companies like Biogone (Australia) show great leadership.
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