Could plastic be simultaneously the best, and worst, invention of the modern world?
Unfortunately you can get too much of a good thing and its disposable ubiquity is tipping the scales from excellence …
…to excremence.
You can even buy plastic food…but I guess plastic turds had to start somewhere! 
What happens when all that novelty plastic goes manky? You chuck it in the bin and it becomes landfill, cos unless it has a recycling number, it can’t be recycled, unlike Mr Number 1 himself, Pete Repeat.
Repeat?
I. SAID. YOU CHUCK IT IN THE BIN AND…hang on. What is this?
In the near future new Australian technology will allow it to reprocessed into useable fuel?
Facility to convert non-recyclable plastic to fuel planned for Canberra
A facility that converts non-recyclable plastics into liquid fuel is being planned for Canberra.
The proposed facility would be built in the industrial estate of Hume and divert 200 tonnes of plastic from landfill each day.
“It breaks plastics down into a sludge and converts it into road-ready diesel and petrol,” FOY Group managing director Stuart Clark said.
“Plastics originally come from oil in the first place so it’s really just reversing it — chemically it’s not a major change.”
Australians consume more than 1.5 million tonnes of plastic each year, with much of that ending up in waterways. (That is about 62.5kg each)
Obviously not producing the plastic in the first place is the best option, but like I opined last week, most of us can’t resist the temptations of life’s pleasures, no matter how harmful (or petroleum based) they are. Or how well meaning or aware we are.
Until we come up with a better alternative, if this turns plastic waste into a reusable resource, that is a GOOD THING. If it keeps shale oil in the ground, that is another GOOD THING.
If it is a widespread success it may even provide a source of income to people who can collect and return waste. Let’s start them off with a container tax.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It is still the energy intensive third best option, but at least recycling of former non-recyclables may at last be here.
Barbie and her campervan might get to go on that road trip after all …
… they’ll be fuelling it!
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Until we do learn to treat plastic as the precious menace it is, anything we can do to keep it out of the oceans is a GOOD THING. A lot of the city flooding throughout Asia is attributed to clogging of stormwater systems by plastic.
Thailand is considered to have the world’s highest per capita consumption of plastic bags…averaging eight per person per day, or 2,920 per year; compared to 80 per person, per year, in France.
The nation has a thriving street food culture with millions eating or buying their meals on the pavement each day. There once was a time when most of these dishes would be served wrapped in biodegradable banana leaves. But no longer.
It is a shift familiar across the region, with devastating results for the world’s oceans.
In a recent report, an American conservation group Ocean Conservancy estimated that just five countries — China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — were responsible for as much as 60 percent of plastic waste dumped into the ocean.
Narong Ruengsri, head of Bangkok city authority’s drainage department, said removing so much plastic from the canals and drainage system is a constant battle.
“Every day we go fish out around 2,000 tons of waste from the drainage channels,” he told AFP.
http://www.thenational.ae/world/southeast-asia/flood-threat-as-plastic-bags-clog-bangkoks-sewers
We want to change the world’s attitude towards plastic within a generation.
The Plastic Oceans Foundation is a UK charity which has been established to provide a powerful and effective platform that wants to change the world’s attitudes towards plastic. Plastic Pollution has become a man-made global catastrophe. Over the last 60 years plastic has become central to our lives and as a result mankind has subjected the planet to a tsunami of plastic waste. The scale of the problem is exponential.
Plastic Oceans Foundation was formed 7 years ago by Sonjia Norman (Director of Plastic Oceans, Hong Kong) and Jo Ruxton (Film Producer: World Wildlife Fund, Blue Planet, A Plastic Ocean).
Money is best best carrot/stick to change behaviour.
If plastic becomes either more expensive, less will be produced.
If it becomes more valuable, less will end up as waste.
52 charities - 52 weeks 