I have never been much of an environmentalist, frankly. I don’t toss rubbish out the car window or pour motor oil in the storm drains, but I have never been very proactively green. But I’m trying.
I just took notice of how many plastic bottles we go through in a week at our home, and it started bothering me. We are not a large family but between the water, juice and soda we discard dozens weekly.
“The most reliable statistics from the Pacific Institute put America’s love affair with water bottles at 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006. Due to negative press on the possible health effects of the use, most people are aware water bottles are sold in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. In order to manufacture these bottles over 900,000 tons of plastic is needed. The mainstream manufacturing process that produces PET bottles requires a combination of natural gas and petroleum. The petroleum requirement is where the statistics show that America’s obsession could be hurting their wallets at the gas pump.
Bottom line, the production of 31.2 billion liters of water for the U.S. bottled water market took roughly 17.6 million barrels of oil. The calculation is explained in more detail at the Pacific Institute’s information page under the energy requirements for plastic bottles. The simple break down is 3.4 megajoules of energy to produce a water bottle, cap and packaging with a barrel of oil producing about 6 thousand megajoules. Taking those numbers into account you arrive at 17.6 million barrels of oil, enough oil to run 1.5 million cars on U.S. roadways for an entire year.”
Source: http://i.treehugger.com
It adds up, and adds up fast.
So I am taking one small personal step toward reducing my use and disposal of plastic bottles. I went out to Costco and bought a 3-pack of Contigo 24-ounce reusable water bottles and use my black one constantly instead of grabbing a bottled water and disposing of the bottle. It’s not that inconvenient, holds more water (increasing my water consumption) and is spill-proof, had a handle that hooks onto a backpack and is dishwasher safe.
If more people would take that simple step…
