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? 
WTE in China
Posted on July 15, 2012 by DrRossH in Landfills and Disposal
Combustion of MSW on a moving grate
WTE in China – Waste Mangagement World.
Of the estimated one billion tons (907 million tonnes) of global ‘post-recycling’ MSW, close to 200 million tons (181 million tonnes) are processed in Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plants that recover the energy content of waste in the form of electricity or heat. The dominant WTE technology involves combustion of MSW on an inclined or horizontal grate. There are over 500 WTE plants of this type operating in 35 countries.
Most of the global urban MSW, i.e. over 800 million tons (725 million tonnes), is landfilled. The Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University has estimated that one square metre (about 10 square feet) is used up, forever, for every ten tons (nine tonnes) of MSW landfilled. True sustainable development requires that only inorganic residues be landfilled, as is already the practice in several countries. However, this would require us to considerably increase the present global WTE capacity of about 200 million tons (181 million tonnes) and this is a very costly proposition, especially for developing nations.
Obviously, the need is greatest in large nations with rapidly growing cities, such as China and India, where existing dump sites are overfilled.
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