On Tue, 02 Jan 2018 09:52:33 +0000, Chris Hogg wrote:


Not at a silly if you’re at all aware just how much of out plastic waste
ends up all over our countryside and on our beaches.

How much, then, in terms of tons, or percentage of what we throw away?
Unsightly, yes, but I doubt it's actually a very significant
proportion of the total.

Apart from the fact that plastics,
especially plastic packaging, is an extremely useful and hygienic way
of presenting food etc

That is the crux of the problem. It’s incredibly useful and good at doing
that.

, I read that 90% of the plastic waste in our
oceans comes from rivers in the Far East. http://bit.ly/2lC2qGR

Whilst that may be true for much of what is floating out in the open ocean
I fill a large carrier bag every day with plastic litter from our local
beach. I can assure you that it’s not stuff from the Far East.

In the far SW, and indeed on the UK west coast in general, a lot of
the waste (not just plastic) that ends up on the beaches, comes from
across the Atlantic,
You also live in area which is still relatively unpopulated compared
to some parts of the UK, where the population is denser almost any
watercourse now has a collection of plastic bobbing away which unless
it is physically caught and removed will eventually be washed in to
the sea during periods of heavy rainfall that move all the bottles,
parking cones etc onwards.
I took a walk on Bude beach on Boxing day and although some of the
plastic was anonymous there were R Whites lemonade and Bulmers cider
and other branded containers piled up on the tide line unlikely to
have have come from abroad.
They could have come from anywhere that has water courses that
eventually feed into the Severn and then the Bristol Channel and that
is a lot of sizable places such as Bristol, Cardiff ,Worcester,
Stratford upon Avon and hundreds more. Its no wonder that places like
Watch et Clovelley , Marsland Mouth, Crackington Haven and the rest no
longer have the tide mark delineated by sea weed and the odd cork
float or natural fibre rope but now have a thick detritus of plastic
containers and lost plastic fishing gear and ships ropes.made from
synthetic materials.

I could be cheeky and say you have selective vision as to what gets
chucked in the sea as your former industry chucked enough rubbish in
the sea that it turned the streams white for decades..
Your pension may well be heathier because of the costs saved.
Occasionally standards still slip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8140783.stm

At least once stopped the effects largely stop as well, plastic
pollution last a lot longer.

G.Harman