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A Million Bottles a Minute: World's Plastic Binge 'As Dangerous as Climate Change' (theguardian.com)
Should you ever travel to one of the many uninhibited islands that dot the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans, chances are you'll find plastic bottles littering the shore. The Guardian reports: A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20 percent by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade. The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised "on the go" culture to China and the Asia Pacific region. More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. By 2021 this will increase to 583.3bn, according to the most up-to-date estimates from Euromonitor International's global packaging trends report. Most plastic bottles used for soft drinks and water are made from polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), which is highly recyclable. But as their use soars across the globe, efforts to collect and recycle the bottles to keep them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up.
They fit in my cupholders and they are the cheapest way to buy spring water, assuming you get them on sale. I bought two flats of bottles for $3 and then they went down and I bought two more for $2 each.
I do bring them home and put them into the recycling bin, so to me the solution is to make that work. But I'd be equally happy to pay a few cents more per bottle to get compostable ones.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Overpopulation. The planet has 7.5 billion people, all of whom want to live the good life as seen in Hollywood movies and TV. One estimate has us reaching 10 billion by 2050. If there were only a billion, some plastic waste and CO2 emissions might not be such a problem. But the existing 7.5 billion folks are already destroying the biosphere, and that is today, where only a few percent (like the US, Western Europe) are enjoying the wonderful lifestyle. Good luck trying to convince all 7.5+ billion people to stop aspiring to own a car and eat steak. It will only get worse. In the long run, however, it will probably be a self-correcting problem, if you know what I mean.
This sounds like a lot, but in reality it is a small fraction of the oil used per hour by humanity. The average weight of a PET drink bottle is 12.7grams, so a million bottles a minute is about 12.7 metric tonnes of plastic a minute. Assuming 100% conversion efficiency from crude into PET (ie other distillates are utilised for other purposes) that is about 90 barrels a minute or 129600 barrels a day.
World crude oil usage is about 100 million barrels a day. So plastic bottles are about 0.13% of daily oil consumption. Even if we stopped using them altogether, the impact would be trivial. Also, many countries burn plastic waste to generate energy, so removing bottles as fuel will potentially cause an equivalent increase in other fossil fuel usage.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help the environment. Just pointing out that this is not going to be a panacea.
I have NEVER seen a cheap piece of plastic last for more than a couple years out baking in the sunshine. It disintegrates on it's own. {...} but it all reverts back to good ole mother earth.
Yes, under the sun (and lots of other environmental factors, including mechanical action) a bottle will disintegrates.
But THIS IS NOT reverting back to good old mother earth.
It is just breaking a big plastic object into finer plastic dust.
Which brings its own bunch of problems:
- this plastic dust disperse wide
- this plastic dust has a higher risk of getting ingested by marine animal
- this plastic dust also collects organic compounds more easily
- once ingested by marine animal, due to higher amount of organic compound stuck on the plastic dust, these animal accumulate more pollution.
(There a movie called "A plastic ocean" currently touring festivals that explains this better).
And thus, TFS :
Should you ever travel to one of the many uninhibited islands that dot the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans, chances are you'll find plastic bottles littering the shore.
That's actually a myth. You're nearly NEVER going to find whole intact plastic bottles in remote places because the above phenomenon.
The reality is actually much grimmer :
- with the naked eye you're not going to see much (again, artificial islands of collect plastic junks are a myth).
- but if you make lab analysis of the environment, you'll see that :
-- most local marine animals have ingested an alarming amount of plastic dust in their bodies
-- and they'll have probably concentrated some polluant at higher dose.
Otherwise the Tennessee River which I grew up on would be totally lined with styrofoam.
It is a *river*. It wont never stay lined with anything for a long time : eventually everything will get carried away by the current and broken down in smaller particles (also some substance like steel *will* degrade (to rust, etc.) while other like glass and plastic are too chemically stable. At least glass will break-down into sand (basically : glass dust)).
Once carried away by the current they will eventually find their way into the seas, then into the ocean, when they'll finally get caught into some current that will keep them in some cycle forever.
Heck, there are some woods, cedar for example, that will last longer than a plastic bottle exposed to the elements.
Actually wood isn't such a bad exemple.
But not for the reasons you think.
(No: it won't last longer than plastic bottle. It will *keep its shape* for a longer time than plastic [that's why life invented it in plants : because it's structurally sturdy]. But eventually, decomposers [bacteria, funghi, etc.] will manage to digest it. It will actually end up back into CO2)
But some eons ago that wasn't the case. It took some time between life inventing wood (somewhere in the Devonian), and bacteria coming up with a way to degrade it.
Of course all this juicy stored chemical energy was going to end-up being used as a food source for some microbes.
The same situation is happening again. We human produce tons of a nearly indestructible component (plastic) but that is still rich in stored chemical energy (the fact that you can actually burn it into CO2 is a sign).
Eventually all this untapped chemical energy is going to attract some bacteria, and in the recent couple of year, scientist have discovered some types of bacteria who have evolved a way to digest and process plastics.
Maybe in a couple of centuries (and maybe with a little bit of help by researchers) Nature will find a way to clean it self of this plastic pollution, by inventing a way to harness its stored chemical energy.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Some 90% of the plastic in the Pacific has been traced to Asia, specifically China and Viet nam. Now, the poster of this tries to lay the blame on the west claiming that our selling bottled water is to blame. This is no different than those that blame America for China's gov choosing to build new coals plants and continue using more than 85%coal for electricity. Now, the Chinese and Viet nam gov continue to throw their garbage out because it is cheaper and easier. Since both gov are communist/totalitarian, Both gov could order their citizens to clean up. But neither does.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.