Page 1744 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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banned imports completely. More and more countries are phasing out recycling imports, with Malaysia and Thailand indicating they will do so by 2021. We cannot rely on shipping off our waste to our neighbours. It is time to reduce our waste at home.
Not only do plastics contribute to waste but the process in creating them is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Plastic manufacturing is estimated to use eight per cent of yearly global oil production. When exposed to solar radiation, certain plastics produce methane and ethylene greenhouse gasses. This means the plastics pollute the environment and also have the secondary effect of creating more CO2 as they are exposed to the sun. Reducing our reliance on plastics is therefore a key component in tackling climate change.
Whilst the issue of plastic pollution is a big one, small changes can have a big impact. Encouraging recycling and opting for products that are biodegradable or plastic free are some simple examples. Given our addiction to good coffee here in Canberra, we need to think about what a daily coffee is doing to our environment. Even though they appear to be made of cardboard, most disposable coffee cups are coated in plastic that makes them hard to recycle and not biodegradable. The vast majority therefore end up in landfill. That thin plastic film on the inside of the cup can take 100 years to break down. Even if consumers do the right thing and recycle them, with the current crisis in recycling this is also not sustainable.
Even the biodegradable part of a takeaway coffee cup harms the environment. Some 700,000 trees are cut down every year to create one billion coffee cups. We need to start using alternatives. Re-usable coffee cups are becoming more and more popular as consumers become more aware of the environmental impacts of their choices. Using a re-usable coffee for a year, instead of the disposables, will lead to a 36 to 47 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 64 to 85 per cent reduction in water use and a 92 per cent reduction in landfill. Clearly, we should be encouraging people to embrace re-usable cups.
Whilst education campaigns, word of mouth and changing consumer expectations have done a lot to increase the use of re-usable coffee cups, more can be done. In Germany, cities like Berlin, Munich and Freiburg have established re-usable coffee cup zones. In these areas customers pay a deposit for a disposable cup when they get their coffee at any of the participating stores. They can then return their cup to a participating store and receive the deposit in return. The cafes use this system rather than relying on disposable coffee cups. We could easily implement a scheme like this in Canberra.
Luckily, we already have environmentally conscious cafes implementing waste reduction practices. In my electorate of Yerrabi, alongside Ms Orr I note that Frankies at Forde has stopped using disposable coffee cups altogether, and it has been a success. Everywhere you walk in this city—the town centres or even just the local coffee shop on the weekends—Canberrans are choosing to use their keep cups. There is clearly a willingness in the community to reduce our waste.
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