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Seen to be greener?By: Robert DanielArticle Word Count: 562 words [Comments (0)] Total Views: 21 Views |
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Lots are now offering reusable mugs to drink in store, or that you can purchase and then return to receive a rebate. Thousands of websites have materialised offering biodegradable disposable tableware and "to-go" products. What many do not realise is that some of these products are completely redundant unless the companies and consumers using these products change their habits too. Having just finished reading a press release about a certain eating establishment switching its type of paper cups from the standard oil based lined product to the new in vogue PLA coated "biodegradable" types and advising us how they are single handedly rescuing the environment I feel it is necessary to make a few points. Firstly these PLA coated biodegradable cups will not biodegrade in a landfill so it of no use paying the extra cash for these paper coffee cups if they are simply thrown in the bin bags with the rest of the rubbish and disposed with other unsorted Catering Supplies. Another point to note is that recycling and composting is mainly a service carried out by local councils; and many councils treat waste differently from one location to another. Some will collect your waste plastic for resale (sold typically in the Far East) some will combust it for power, whereas some actually just send it straight to the landfill irrespective of how you have sorted it at home or the coffee shop. One of the main problems with the short sighted efforts of these (usually large) companies trying their upmost to be seen as the leader in fighting climate change is that they do not consider where their waste ends up, how these new products are produced or how they should be handled in order to make the most of their biodegradable properties. Biodegradable paper cups can create more waste if not properly sorted at waste management sites, these new PLA coated paper cups do not differ visually from standard oil lined paper cups and as a result this can actually create more waste. most of all Paper Cups used/sold at present have an oil based lining and are regularly collected for recycling, if however one of these PLA lined paper cups came into contact with these cups, the natural lining would react with the oil based lining and ruin the whole collection. There have already been stories of PLA bottles finding their way into polypropylene recycling collections and contaminating their contents. There have also been reports of deforestation in parts of the far east to create more space to grow the crops used for production of PLA and in the west we have been giving farm subsidies to farmers in parts of Africa to grow many of the crops we are now using for PLA and bio-fuels - moving these people back into poverty! Removing land once used to grow food in order to grow crops for bio-fuels and alternatives to plastics also increases food prices, something many will have noticed recently... Author InfoEvent Supplies15/17 Devonshire Street Keighley BD21 2BH Tel: 0844 4995456 Fax: 0844 4995456 Web: Paper Cups - Catering Supplies - Paper Coffee Cups Grab this articles
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