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? 
Viruses can hitchhike on microplastics – Australia
Posted on November 10, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
Microplastics are not just tiny particles that can be ingested. They can also carry viruses, a University of Queensland study has revealed.
“We found that viruses can hitchhike on microplastics and prolong their infectivity. It means there could be an increased risk of virus transmission throughout waterways and the environment.”
By testing polystyrene particles of varying sizes, we found that more than 98 per cent of the virus we used was found on the microplastic, and over half of the viruses could still be detected ten days later – much longer than if the virus particles were free-floating in the water,” Dr Lu said.
The team also tested how sun exposure and the size of microplastics helped prolong the virus’s survival. They found the more environmental damage on the microplastic, the more likely it was to carry viruses.
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