Last week, we skimmed the surface of the plastic epidemic taking over the United States. What is plastic and why do we care? gave a broad overview of how plastic became the environmental nuisance it is today. However, the plastic crisis goes into a lot more detail than that.
Let’s start with the numbers. Global plastic consumption totaled an earth-shattering 335 million metric tons in 2016. With 7.6 billion people living around the globe, that’s equal to 88 pounds of plastic waste per person per yea
r. And when you think about it, plastic isn’t that heavy. Stop for a minute to think how many plastic products it would take to tally up 88 pounds of it in a single year.
We may think that we’re doing the right thing with our plastic waste by recycling it, but an average of only 9% of plastic is disposed of correctly. The other 91% of plastic waste is sent to landfills where it will decompose over a span of 400 years (or longer) or sent to incinerators, adding particulate matter to the atmosphere.
Plastic is made of durable substances intended to hold their form indefinitely, so no wonder plastic products pollute the earth and stay there, well, forever.
Plastic bottles are some of the most rampant plastic products on the planet. With their on-the-go convenience complementing Americans’ on-the-go lifestyles, plastic bottles are most consumers’ water bottle of choice. This is detrimental to global plastic pollution.
It is estimated that 1 million plastic bottles are purchased around the world every minute. This equates to 50 billion water bottles per year. While it’s understandable that the convenience of plastic water bottles is inevitably makes them so popular, these statistics make you wonder if that convenience is worth the effect these bottles have on pollution statistics.
Needless to say, plastic pollution is out of control. While necessary actions are beginning to take effect to combat this problem, it’s only just beginning to touch the problem at hand. Take a look at the numbers and think of the toll your most used plastic products are taking on our beloved planet. These numbers are only rising each day and we need to learn how to cut the problem off at the source
Just Say No To Plastic 
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