Council voted 3 to 4 against the proposed single use materials policy, which would have banned plastic lined cardboard coffee cups at public markets on Council land.
Councillor James Owen, voting against the policy, said “Any Councillor who votes for this policy is against small businesses.” No Councillor James Owen, that’s not true. The other Councillors are against waste, single use plastics, and we reckon that if the small business owners of the market coffee shop stalls knew they are ingesting millions of nanoparticles of plastic with every cup of coffee, they themselves wouldn’t drink from a plastic lined cardboard coffee cup.
When the plasticised-cardboard of the take-away coffee cup goes through the temperature change of being filled with the hot liquid, thousands of micro and millions of nano sized plastic molecules fracture and fragment away from the plasticised-cardboard, into your cup of coffee. [Source: (link).]
So no Councillor James Owen, you are wrong, this is not a vote against small business, and we very very much resent you saying that to be true, it isn’t true and we herewith formally complain to Council that the Councillor should not insult and defame by inference two thirds of people who put in supportive submissions on the proposed single use materials policy, and everyone else in the Shire who supports Council’s reduction of waste and reduction of single use plastic, and everyone in the Shire who wants common sense actions on minimising our unwanted ingestion of micro and nano plastics, especially from such high particle sources as plastic food service items going through temperature change.
Did Councillor James Owen even read the policy or the submissions or the Council report to Councillors about those submissions? Because if he had of he would know of the highly valid concerns about single use plastic, unnecessary waste, and microplastic ingestion.
Plasticised-Cardboard Take-Away Coffee Cups: 25,000 micron-sized and 12 million nano-sized microplastic particles are released from the plasticised cardboard into your cup of coffee.
Mostly the plastic we ingest passes through us, however, we accumulate plastic nano-particles and studies show them throughout our bodies.
The plastic nano molecules we accumulate accumulate primarily in our brains, we don’t know why, however plastic accumulates in our bodies mostly in our brain, Plastic accumulates in the brain at ~10 times higher levels than in the liver or kidneys (91% vs. 4% and 4% of total plastic mass in these organs). [Source: (link).]
Nothing-Decomposes-Plastic. Plastic may fracture or fragment when exposed to temperature change or sunlight or abrasion, polymer chains being the smallest molecular structure, but it will not go away and it is destroying the ecology at every scale.
Shop instead at the Caldera Environment Centre for ceramic take-away keep cups.
$20, double walled, ceramic. 43a Wollumbin Street Murwillumbah, next to Wholefoods.
Note: Studies linked Above:
• MNP Release: Ranjan et al. (2022, Journal of Hazardous Materials) ‘Microplastics and other harmful substances released from disposable paper cups into hot water.’ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420321087?via%3Dihub
• Brain Accumulation: Nihart et al. (2025, Nature Medicine). Brain MNPs at 4917 µg/g vs. liver (433 µg/g) and kidney (404 µg/g). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
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