And these plastic bottles took a few minutes to purchase. Photo: WIkipedia Commons
Go to your local supermarket or 7-11, any store that sells beverages, and look around. You’ll see plastic bottles everywhere. The Guardian published a recent report by Euromonitor International that put the magnitude of humanity’s plastic bottles obsession into perspective, revealing that humans purchase 1 million plastic bottles every minute. Nope, you did not read that incorrectly. A million plastic bottles around the world every minute equates to about 20,000 each second. Let a second go by…20,000 plastic bottles. Another second…20,000. Yes, this is truly mind-boggling.
The main culprit here is bottled water, and an increase in popularity in the Asian Pacific part of the world (namely China) has the statistical projections looking even grimmer. It’s estimated that the number of plastic bottles purchased per minute will jump to 1.2 million in less than five years. By the end of the decade, the annual total of plastic bottles purchased is expected to crack the half trillion mark. That’s a number that hurts my head to think about in any terms, especially something tangible.
The plastic bottle is a bane of the environment. Despite most plastic bottles being made of Pet, a highly recyclable material, less than half of the bottles purchased in 2016 were even collected for recycling. Less than 10 percent of those collected bottles were made into new bottles. The majority of bottles end up in the ocean or a landfill.
The relationship between plastic and the ocean is a well-documented and dire one. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is dedicated to developing a circular economy, estimates that there will be more plastic than fish by weight by the year 2050. Seems pretty fucking terrible to me.
Birds, fish, and other sea life ingest a lot of plastic already. For some, this alone is a heartbreaking situation. But even for those selfish enough to only care about themselves, think about eating a fish that has dined on a steady diet of plastic. Think that’s good for you?
Some scientists believe that we are already ingesting plastic through our consumption of fish, and one would think it’s only going to increase. The plastic problem is not getting better; it’s getting worse. Hell, look at Henderson Island.
So the next time you think about grabbing that bottle of water, consider how out of control this problem really is and the consequences on the horizon.
