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 Plastic Film Challenge – Canada
Posted on July 28, 2013 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
We use a lot of film as we as a society have made it easy to use. Shrink wrapping of pallets for transport is a good example of where film is widely used.
But is many situations it is not necessary at all. There are other options available that do not use film. Nets, cardboard boxes for example. Just because we have made it easy to use film doesn’t mean it is the only way to go. There are lots of smart people out there who will find other ways if film was not allowed or became cost prohibitive. That is how we got film in the first place. One could safely bet the inventor of plastic film had no idea of the environmental disaster it would be when used in such large scales.
All it wold take is a ‘environmental fee’ to be imposed on the manufacture of plastic film to disincentivise it’s use and that would drive industry to seek other methods.
After why should we the public have to put up with the waste problem and expense of plastic film and MRFs struggle how to handle it and landfills have to take large quantities of it while the manufacturers of the film have no responsibility in any of this?
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