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? 
Woolworths expands soft plastics return network – Australia
Posted on May 7, 2026 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingMore than 700 Woolworths supermarkets across five states are now accepting soft plastics again, marking a major expansion of Australia’s growing soft plastics recovery network.
Source: Woolworths expands soft plastics return network – PKN Packaging News
This is good and bad news. Good that soft plastic is finding another life, and not just dumped. Bad news is that the soft plastic is NOT being returned to manufacturers to make more of the similar items from, but it is being down cycled into 1 more use. It is incumbent on these users to find applications for this soft film. The manufactures of it are getting off scott free from any responsibility of supplying products in these soft films. So, there is no inducement for them to change their practices. They will keep on making it. If they had to bear some of the cost of managing the waste their products make, they would quickly redesign their methodology to use less soft films.
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