Drowning in plastic

Nationwide, we discard thirty to forty billion of these containers a year.

That’s enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.

Specifically, the seventeen million barrels it takes each year to make water bottles for the U.S. market.

Manufacturing and filling plastic water bottles consumes twice as much water as the bottle will ultimately contain,

The plastic pollution lifecycle shows where we are today, and it’s not a pretty picture. Only 9 percent of the world’s plastic waste is recycled. What happens to the rest? Twelve percent is incinerated, emitting carbon dioxide, and the rest ends up in landfills and ultimately our oceans. Plastic pollution has exploded by a factor of ten since 1980.