I realised on my recent trip to Japan that I consumed over 30 bottles of water in 2 weeks. That seems to be a whole lot of unnecessary waste and a really good part of my life to consider.
The facts:
Over 52 billion single-use PET bottles are manufactured every year based on annual sales of over 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water.
A plastic bottle can take over 450 years to degrade.
Bottled water is more expensive than fuel for the car.
100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from ingestion and/or entanglement with marine litter.
When compared to other materials like glass and metal materials, plastic polymers require greater processing to be recycled.
Worldwide, approximately 1.5 million tons of PET are collected per year for recycling.
However the vast majority of PET bottles end up as land fill, in the ocean or incinerated.
My Action:
I am no longer going to purchase water in plastic containers. For $9.95 I have an aluminum drink bottle that means I reduce my waste, it also saves me about $65 a fortnight (30 bottles per fortnight at $2.20) and it stays cold on my rides to and from work.
