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? Symphony Environmental defends biodegradable plastics in recycling stream – Mexico
Posted on September 18, 2014 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSymphony Environmental defends biodegradable plastics in recycling stream – News – Plastics News.
There are a number of reports and comments by experienced independent industry people that say oxo degradable plastics are not compatible with main stream recycling. They are modified plastics that cause plastics to fragment into smaller plastic bits. This is probably not what most recycled plastics manufacturers want to happen to their items. You would not want to take a plastic bag with oxo additive in it and make a bottle from it. The only sensible way to deal with a oxo degradable plastic is to incinerate it for its energy. Then if it is going to be incinerated then why bother to put the oxo additive in it in the first place.
Oxo degradable plastics fragment into small bite size pieces of plastic that wildlife can readily eat. These bits are a lot more mobile in the environment and will get into our oceans faster. This is has to be prevented as our toll on wildlife deaths by plastic is far to high as it is.
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