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? The 4Rs for Controlling Plastic Waste
Posted on December 30, 2011 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsThe 4Rs are incorporated in to the Logo of Plastic Waste Solutions. We all know the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle as a proposed plan to control the use of plastics and other waste. There is a large element missing in this however and applies to over 90% of plastic waste. In the USA there is 30 million tons of plastic made per years and over 90% goes to landfills. In Australia there are 5 million tons made every year and 81% is disposed. What is needed to add to the above is treating the plastic that goes to a landfill so it biodegrades away. This is achieved by the addition of a landfill-biodegradable additive to the plastic at the time of extrusion. Hence the concept, coined by PWS, of the 4Rs for Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rejuvenate where Rejuvenate is for when the plastic biodegrades down to humus or fertiliser and rejuvenates the ground. These 4Rs now encompass the whole solution to controlling plastic waste (with the exception of litter). See facebook.com/drrosshpws or on twitter/@drrossh.
We could consider landfill-biodegradable additives as a back stop for plastics. If all plastics had one of these additives in them, then no matter whether the plastic was recycled, disposed to landfill or incinerated, either way no long term plastic waste is left. If recycled, then other plastics are made biodegradable, if landfilled it biodegrades away or if incinerated, it doesn’t matter if the plastic had a small amount of the additive in it.
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