Approximately 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide—and that number is expected to increase by 20% in the next four years, according to an exclusive report from the Guardian. It gets worse. Less than half of the 580 billion plastic bottles purchased in 2016 were recycled and only 7% were turned into new bottles. The majority ended up in oceans or landfills. Research indicates the oceans will contain more pounds of plastic than pounds of fish by 2050. And environmentalists are beginning to warn that plastic bottles could present as great a threat to the environment as climate change. “[Plastic] pollutes every natural system and an increasing number of organisms on planet Earth,” a member of Surfers Against Sewage says.
Most plastic bottles are used for drinking water. Coca-Cola alone makes more than 100 billion plastic bottles per year, or about 3,400 per second, according to a Greenpeace analysis. Environmentalists want companies like Coca-Cola to use more recycled plastic in their bottles; the top three drink companies average just 6.6% of recycled plastic per bottle. They complain that recycled plastic doesn’t allow them to have shiny, clear bottles and that the supply of quality recycled plastic isn’t large enough.
Surfers Against Sewage? Christ Almighty.
Membership criteria: Ability to smoke the equivalent of your own body weight in pot daily.
I don’t believe anything the Guardian writes. While most PET that’s recycled doesn’t go back into bottles is fine, there are a lot of uses for it. The trouble is making it easier to re-cycle.
I saw a prototype vending machine at Cincinnati Milacron that would take an empty 2l PET bottle and pay a penny or so out (whatever the particular state used as a return policy). That was probably 25 years ago, and I never saw another one.
I should add, the best policy is state of the art incinerators, where the PET, LLDPE, and HDPE containers add significant BTUs to combustion thereby making the incinerators more efficient.
More “The sky is falling” bullshit from the tree huggers. If the numbers that they throw out were actually true, then we would be buried under a layer of plastic debris yards thick in no time at all. Just like the climate change fanatics claimed twenty years ago that there would be no more glaciers. It’s all sensationalist crap designed to scare the weak minded.
We’ve explored less than 5% of the oceans, yet “research” indicates more plastic than fish by 2050. Yeah, okay, did they also calculate the destructive forces of the scientifically proven man made climate change in the research? Paris claims “unrecoverable damages” in 3 years if we don’t take serious action now. Fauxohontis Warren says 30 million people will DIE because of GOP spending cuts. Are these unrecoverable damages and 30 million dead people included in the calculation? I mean, we’re talking scientific fact here guys.
Just shut up and gimme a cold one.
Is that why my man-boobs have been growing at a rapid pace?
OCEANS? 90% of our female news hosts are turning into plastic!
M.A.G.A.!
I’m all for back to glass.
It sinks, it provides a home to little fishes, it doesn’t pollute.
@Irony Curtain
Nah, brah… It’s “Ability to smoke your own body weight of someone else’s pot daily.”
For water bottles at the beginning of each year I find the sturdiest water bottle out there of about 500 to 710 ML and buy three. They are usually those flavoured water drinks whose different colors purport to support different body functions. Anyway, I drink the contents, wash them out and fill them with water from my kitchen tap with a Brita filtre on in. I only use Brita filtered water for cooking and drinking so it lasts a good long time. Before I go to bed two bottles go in the freezer and one in the fridge. I can have a bottle while getting organized for may day and toss the two frozen ones in my backback for cold water all day. I get some dirty looks from hippies from time to time but if they only knew.
If we want to the plastics problem disappear make the stuff out of some biodegradable plant life that has been stabilized for two years and put a best before soaking date on it.
Little bottles of water are the New Baby Pacifier for anxious Snowflakes. It’s a neurosis when you’re indoors in an air conditioned cubicle and you obsessively clutch your water bottle like you’ve just been rescued from a lifeboat at sea.
Reusable collapsible water bottles (Playypus, PUR) last for years. Knockoffs are in every WalMart and Dollar Store.
Trigglypuff is clutching her little baby water bottle in that classic video. Case closed.
I bought two of the Brita filtered squeeze bottles. Great little devices. I stretch the filter life by soaking in hydrogen peroxide when they get old, then rinse well and keep going.
Maths. A plastic PET bottle weighs between 10 and 13 grams, depending on who makes it and depending on 12 or 16 ounces with the cap off. Take the average of 11.5 grams each. Use their 20% increase model for all time until 2050, for 1.2 million bottles a minute. That’s 1.728 billion bottles per day minus a 6% recycle rate is 1.624 billion bottles per day * 11.5 grams = 1.8679 trillion grams, or 41,695,714 pounds. PER DAY, or 15,218,935,714 pounds PER YEAR. From now until 2050 (call it 32 years) = 487,005,942,857 POUNDS. Then add back in that same amount because we’ve added that already to the oceans, and we end up with 974,011,885,714. Round up and call it a cool 1 trillion pounds.
Now you know how many pounds of fish there are in the ocean by the year 2050.
Sounds like a job for Matt Damon and Leo Dicaprio.
By contrast, if there are 10 billion people by 2050 with an average weight of 150 lbs, we’re talking 1.5 Trillion pounds of people. More people than fish!!
Remember that urban-mythical Giant Island Of Floating Plastic 15 Feet High The Size Of Texas that is supposed to be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?
One rich environmentalist Greenpeace yachtsman claimed he spotted it around 1999. Claims it took him days to sail past it. Despite a huge yacht full of video cameras, he couldn’t produce a single photo. His story changed constantly and the size of his Continent Of Plastic grew larger each time he appeared on TV.
It doesn’t exist. Satellites can’t find it, airline pilots fly over the supposed area daily and can’t find it, shipping lanes never spot it.
Perfect urban myth. But it comes up quickly in any discussion of ocean plastics.
A Leftist Lie can circle the Earth, spread by fools, while the Truth is putting in its shoes.
I buy 25 cases a week for my sail boat and always throw the empty bottles over board.
Years ago, I wanted to teach my son the value in recycling. I chose plastic as it was easy for him to help collect. Over a period of about six months, we collected a heaping pick-up truck of plastic from many sources. We compacted the bottles and cut the other plastic material into small pieces to get the most plastic onto the truck. It was a lot. One Saturday, we drove to the local recycle that bought plastic scrap and after they weighed the material and off-loaded it, we waited for the check that I was going to let my son have as an incentive for him to continue the practice of recycling. When the guy handed me the check, it was a whopping $1.28. That didn’t even pay for the gas to bring the damn plastic to the recycle center. I lost money. I did make money for the next 32 years working at a chemical plant making polyethylene and was able to retire at 59 years old with enough to never have to work again. Plastic has been very good to me and my family.
Great! Nothing to worry about,then.
But you can’t dump your evil plastics out there — I sail out there!
Dump them in Alabama or somewhere.
Can’t think of the last time I bought a plastic bottle.
Maybe when the kids were in high school 20+ years ago and bought a six-pack of water every few months. Wrote their initials on the bottle and kept washing and refilling until the bottle was shot.
Then thew the spent bottle into the trash.
Surfers Are More on Target with the Environment than 90% of their Peers !
They are at Heart Conservatives, and they Pick Up Everyone Elses Crap ! Real Crap You Can See…Not Fluffy Obama Cloud Dreams !!!
I rotate through 12 cases at home just to maintain
typhoon stock in house.
Most people don’t unnerstand going a week without
water. Here in Guam, they are that phucking bad.
I also have a Steripen for when it really get’s bad. I
recommend them.
I got a plazdick bottle stuck on my head wunce.
I d[n’t no how it happned, but it was the skardiedest 20 minut of my life – the SS guys had to saw it off my head with a pocket nive.
o – it was my head, head – not my dick, head ……..
Had em stuck on my dick plenty of times, y’no, …… just pissing and what not