Plastic water bottles have exploded onto the scene because of their convenience and belief that they are clean and healthy for you. We won’t even talk abut the amount of things that are in bottled water these days because that’s a whole other topic.
Did you know that, accordingy to the New York Times, 90 percent of the impact on the environment from a plastic bottle has already occured before the bottle is opened. Plastic bottles have a surprisingly large carbon footprint.
It takes 900,000 tons of plastic in order to create the 29 billion plastic bottles that we use in the United States alone.
Brought to you by the Pacific Institute:
“the energy used for pumping and processing, transportation, and refrigeration, brings the annual fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption in the United States to more than 50 million barrels of oil.”
Another thing that I found interesting was that it took 2 liters of water to make the plastic for a 1 liter bottle of water. So essentially, every 1 liter bottle of water that you purchase has a value of 3 liters of water.
After all is said and done, every ton of plastic for water bottles created releases 3 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And on top of that, only about 15 percent of water bottles are recycled.
Picture from Brita.com
