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? What is the New Plastics Economy Initiative? -UK
Posted on January 30, 2017 by DrRossH in GeneralSource: What is the New Plastics Economy Initiative? Pollution Solutions Online
After the publication of a comprehensive report that same month, the New Plastics Economy team set about trying to convince major players in all manner of industries to come around to their way of thinking. The end result was the Davos conference, which took place on Monday 20th January 2017 and saw over 30 of the world’s leading companies agree to investigate better methods of plastic production and consumption.
The research gathered by the New Plastics Economy initiative revealed three key strategies for improving plastic’s environmental performance in the coming years. These consisted of:
- Recycling as much as 50% of all plastic waste, by altering design and post-use handling methods
- Reusing as much as 20% of all plastic products, for example in the case of plastic shopping bags
- Redesigning the remaining 30% so that even if it does end up in a landfill, it will naturally decompose over time and not be a threat to the environment
We should not let companies get away with saying their packaging is recyclable and not doing anything else. That just leads to a lot of litter that doesn’t go away. Manufacturers have t be part of the solution with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) being part of every day production. A plastics tax on conventional plastic materials would be the simplest way to push manufacturers away from plastic packaging. They would soon figure out a way to use other more benevolent materials for their products.
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