So I was in a local grocery store looking at the wall of plastic water bottles, juice bottles, soda bottles and I wondered what percentage of those bottles actually were recycled. I try not to buy plastic bottles- but sometimes I don't have a choice. If I buy even one a week that is about 260 bottles every five years- definitely contributing to the problem. So some quick googling pointed me to this statistic:
Bottles by the numbers
Only about 12 percent of "custom" plastic bottles, a category dominated by water, were recycled in 2003, according to industry consultant R.W. Beck, Inc. That's 40 million bottles a day that went into the trash or became litter.
And later in the article there is this statement :
The low water bottle recycling rate also impacts the overall recycling rate of all recyclable plastic containers. That's fallen from 53 percent in 1994 to 19 percent in 2003.
So this article Plastic Bottles Pile Up is actually about the need for better recycling opportunities which I am all for- but what about just buying a reusable container and stepping out of that loop altogether?
I am faaaaaar from a perfect environmentalist- very far- but I am looking to make little changes that will have a big impact over time.
