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? Why pricing waste incineration is the missing piece of Europe’s plastics policy – Europe
Posted on June 17, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingYesterday’s orientation debate in the European Commission on the future of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) quietly opened the door to one of the most consequential climate and circular economy reforms of this decade: the inclusion of municipal waste incineration in the ETS, writes Janek Vähk, policy manager at Zero Waste Europe.
Source: Why pricing waste incineration is the missing piece of Europe’s plastics policy – Plastics News
The Commission’s own discussion paper rightly notes that the upcoming review should ensure that all sectors contribute fairly to Europe’s climate targets and explicitly highlights waste incineration as an opportunity to create “economic incentives for more circularity” and support carbon capture, storage and use.
Commission assessments show emissions from the sector have increased dramatically over recent decades—by around 300%—making waste incineration one of Europe’s fastest-growing sources of fossil CO₂. If treated as an ETS sector today, municipal waste incineration would already rank among the largest emitting sectors covered by the system—around seventh overall.
This trend should concern anyone serious about plastics circularity.
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