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 future of waste infrastructure – Australia
Posted on July 9, 2021 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource: The future of waste infrastructure – Inside Waste
A study undertaken by the Wealth from Waste Cluster identified the following barriers to a circular economy; high cost of collection, complex product design, preferences for new products and immature secondary supply chains. In addition, it was noted that circular economy was not a priority for small- to medium-sized enterprises, there was inconsistent and incomplete policy and investment was not forthcoming due to a lack of performance data.
There are positives in the work done to date to advance the circular economy, but given the sheer quantity of waste being generated and already in the system, there is much more that will need to be done to bring society towards a true circular system for waste.
We have a long way to go, but it will need constant and large pressure to keep it moving along otherwise it will be another blip in the failed attempts to recycle plastic waste.
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