Plastic In The News - Your Coffee Is About To Get Even More Expensive

So I’m still going on about plastic at the minute but that’s only because of what’s been happening in the news over the last week or so.

First of all an announcement from China has stated that it will no longer be importing plastics from other countries to recycle. This is serious as currently China is importing and recycling around 500,000 tonnes of UK plastic waste annually, and we’re not the only country to send our waste there. As in 2016 alone China processed 7.3 million tonnes of plastic which is over half the total amount recycled globally in 2016.

This new import ban is understandable as China as an industrial country is heavily polluted and although a large amount of business was conducted thanks to the importation then breaking down and recycling of plastics. So not only will foreign

exports such as the UK suffer and have to look for other countries such as Malaysia or Vietnam to take in and process their waste or deal with it themselves, so of the Chinese population will have to undergo changes as their source of income adapt. But I think it is right as if China wishes to ban plastic imports as it shows that they wish for their country to develop and are taking environmental factors into consideration.

As well as this news the UK ministers have also brought up today that they wish to impose a 25p “latte levy” per disposable coffee cup used in the UK. This is thought to be widely welcomed by many as currently the UK throws away 2.5 billion coffee cups a year.

This is mainly due to the fact of their composition as they are cardboard with an plastic lining to waterproof the container. This is effective and cheap to produce but it does make them extremely difficult to recycle as these elements have to be separated. As of this moment there are only two processing plants in the UK capable to undertake this process which limits the amounts which can be recycled.

Ministers have said that they hope that this new levy will help to encourage people to make use of reusable cups instead of the one use items.

Disposable cups also help bring up the fact that some commonly used products are extremely difficult to break down to recycle. Such as Pringle cans, those trays used in food packaging and Lucozade sport bottles all because they are made up of several different core components.

Hopefully these announcements will have the desired effects.

Thanks for reading! 

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