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? Young Afghan refugee killed in Turkish plastic plant as EU waste shipments soar
Posted on September 18, 2025 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingA global journalistic investigation has uncovered the death of a young Afghan refugee in a plastic waste sorting plant in Turkey.The investigation by ENDS Report, Journalismfund Europe, and De Groene Amsterdammer culminated in a three-part podcast series called ‘Boy Wasted’. …
Turkey, an OECD country, is the number one destination for EU plastic waste. Data from the Basel Action Network shows that Germany sent 7.4 million kilograms per month to Turkey as of September 2024, whilst Belgium sent 4.6 million kg/month, Italy 3.4 million kg/month, Spain 3.1 million kg/month, and the Netherlands 1.9 million kg/month. In June 2025, the UK sent 9.9 million kg of plastic waste to Turkey.
EU plastic waste exports to Turkey increased to 41 million kg/month in April 2025 from 10.7 million in January 2023. That is equal to 255 truckloads of plastic waste every day.
While this is a tragic story about a child being cut in half, the other part of the story of how much plastic is beng dumped on these lower income countries from the affluent western blocks is appalling. 41 thousand tonnes per month!
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