While taking a silly How Green Are You? quiz, I learned that Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles AN HOUR. An hour! Every day! So I did a quick Google search and learned even more horrifying statistics about plastic water bottles.
- Americans spend $11 billion on bottled water each year. (Imagine what good could come of that money if we invested it in something else. Cancer or AIDS research, feeding the hungry, investing in women's shelters, spaying or neutering homeless pets... But I digress.)
- Worldwide, $35 billion is spent on bottled water each year.
- Only 14% of plastic water bottles are recycled. The rest end up in landfills or on the side of the road.
- In California alone, more than a billion plastic water bottles are thrown away each year, ending up in landfills and taking 1,000 YEARS to biodegrade.
- 1.5 million barrels of petroleum are used to produce plastic water bottles in the United States each year. That’s enough petroleum to supply 250,000 homes with electricity or 100,000 cars with gasoline.
Something's gotta give. Please, if you can, buy a water pitcher (like a Brita or Pur) and filter the water from your tap. When you need to take it with you -- on a roadtrip, at work, at the gym -- buy an ecofriendly reusable bottle. Here are some that Time magazine recommended.
If we all do this one little thing, imagine the impact we can have.
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