Plastic Bottle Usage Statistics

Municipal solid waste stream is recycled.

Plastic bottle usage statistics. More than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every day. Plastic in the recent decades has become a staple of convenience and a modern lifestyle. In south australia which has container deposit legislation the plastic bottle recycling rate is 74. Assuming the 582 9 million litres of bottled water produced in 2009 10 is in litre bottles according to these figures 373 million of those bottles will end up as waste.

In fact energy is used during the entire lifespan of a plastic bottle. Australia recycles only 36 of pet plastic drink bottles. An average environmentally conscious individual could probably recite several plastic waste statistics in any given conversation to spread awareness about the material s dangers to the planet. That s about 307 bags per person.

This web page is a brief summary of plastic materials specific data. Plastic recycling has become an increasingly important sector of recycling but it would be hard to declare it a great success story from an environmental perspective less than 10 of plastic generation from the u s. In the usa about 76 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture transport store and dispose of the plastic bottles for bottled water used in a single year. Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags annually.

Technically they can last forever. It takes 1 pet plastic bottle 700 years to start decomposing. 2 90 of the cost of bottled water is due to the packaging not the water. That means by using a reusable water bottle you could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually.

Plastic bottles and bottle caps rank as the third and fourth most collected plastic trash items in the ocean conservancy s annual september beach cleanups in more than 100 countries. This includes the energy used for transportation storage and the final disposal of the bottle. Ocean plastic and plastic shopping bags still present major global challenges. Such a negative view of plastic did not always exist though.

Plastic resins are also used in a variety of container and packaging products such as pet beverage bottles hdpe bottles for milk and water and a wide variety of other resin types used in other plastic containers bags sacks wraps and lids. Only 1 of plastic bags are returned for recycling. Every person reading this has used a plastic bottle many of whom likely used one in the past day or week.