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Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

By Andrew Nusca | July 26, 2010, 9:29 AM PDT

Just think about it: every single piece of plastic that has ever been produced in history still exists.

We talk a lot about sustainable business here on SmartPlanet, but it’s never more evident for the manufacturers of plastic products that something needs to change.

A new video by GOOD and TakePart.com explains just how much plastic is lying around the Earth — much of it in our oceans.

While the video takes a decidedly environmental bent, it’s important to think about all the industries that manufacture plastic on some level. Surely it can’t be easy to formulate that company-wide sustainability report at the end of the year.

(On the flip side, there’s a big opportunity to be had if someone can figure out how to use plastic for something more productive.)

A related infographic, also from GOOD: Of the $2.6 million spent by the U.S. House of Representatives on food during a nine-month period from 2009 to 2010, more than 20 percent — $604,000 — was spent on bottled water.

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About Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca is the editor of SmartPlanet.

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Plastic Bottles

West Paw Design www.westpawdesign.com uses recycled plastic bottles as the filling in its pet beds. That's a great way to reuse recycled plastic.

Posted by abschumann

8th Apr

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

Plastic is almost 100% recycleable. It is relatively simple to recycle, it takes much less energy to recycle, and has a much smaller environmental imact when recycling it as opposed to other recycleable materials which use almost as much energy to recycle as they did to create the first time around. We should be using MORE plastic... and doing MUCH MORE to recycle it.

Posted by AnAnyMouse

26th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

any article that starts ' every piece of plastic that has ever been produced still exists' is obviously written by someone who is ignorant.
would it not be possible to publish an article about the plastic waste that is based on fact rather than the idiotic ideas of persons with a bridge to sell us?

Posted by stilt21

26th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

it's a shame that so many plastic bottles are being thrown away.
they are clogging up our landfills and ruining our planet. i heard
about a new type of water bottle that uses a biodegradable liner to
eliminate such a problem. no more bottles in landfills and healthy
water every time. my friend gave me a link to the website if anyone
is interested. lets do what we can to make our planet a healthy
place to live again. great article, by the way. very informative.
www.flexrsports.com

Posted by jbosque2

26th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

I'm an instant plastic expert!
no, but seriously, these things are great at getting people to think
about this, but, considering that '75% of people know that statistics
can be manipulated' they're of relatively little value other than just
turning public's mind to a problem/issue.

Example, on the factoid stated in the video that 'every piece of
plastic every made still exists today' they apparently haven't read
bout the guy who feeds plastic bags to his microbes and makes
gasoline, or the companies who gasify plastics and turn them into
COKE and fuel (pyrogas, hydrogen, etc). Let about the plastics fed
into incinerators or plasma arc reactors. It also doesn't mention
statistics for what percentage of that plastic that still exists exists after
having been recycled countless times and from countless products
into countless products.
It also didn't mention the 'bio-plastics' which have been broken down
into people's gardens and fed their tomatoes.

Its great to raise people's awareness to problems, but to not offer
solutions is more just shock & awe, and we've seen how that
bombing campaign 7-8 years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq has
worked out for our economy. Maybe that approach in conjunction
with another approach as well may help steer people in the right
direction.

Posted by Vailhem@...

26th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

Not all plastics are recyclable - only #1 and #2 are. The rest are disposed of and will pretty much last forever.

The point of the article is to make people think. Use your brain to help solve the problem. Don't just put on blinders.

Posted by jwurster

27th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

@jqurster: have you ever looked into the gasification of plastics?
Just because something isn't turned back into another form of itself
doesn't mean it isn't recycled. The gasification of less easily
recycled plastics still allows for those waste plastics (of various
numbers) to be turned into various products (read: coke and fuel).
They're thus, technically, recycled.... and, to say "Every piece of
plastic..." is to not look at other approaches. Hell, bio-plastics
broken down in my compost bin still, technically exist, just in the form
of my green beans... which I've since eaten and converted into dirty
toilet water. Absolutes are almost always false.

Posted by Vailhem@...

27th Jul 2010

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RE: Infographic: Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour

So "plastic" is a problem; how about defining and putting the 'problem' in to context? Of all the ?pollution/contaminants? problems, how important is ?plastic?. It?s pretty clear to anyone who?s not made the ?environment? into a jihadist religion, that plastics are not going away anytime soon, same for oil (fuel). Anyone who doesn?t recognize that is obviously not grounded in the reality of the massive infrastructure ?replacement? required to change either of those areas of our lives. It?s simply not possible to convert to something else quickly and no way will you convince a democratic majority to make some sort of massive sacrifice to addresses the perceived problem.

I?d like to hear why plastics in landfills are a problem? Aren?t landfills depleted mining pits, e.g. former gravel pits etc, which get filled in with garbage and eventually made into useful real-estate? Are plastics (garbage) still being dumped in the ocean; I know that used to be done, particularly on the east coast, I believe? But I thought that had been discontinued? By the way, there are 7 recycle codes (Resin Identification Codes) for plastic and as stated previously, all plastic can be recycled but not all locations accept all plastic for recycling.

I?m not ?anti-environment? but I?m an engineer and shallow discussions such as this annoy me. I want to hear/read what the precise problem is (with some context of the overall problem) and what the practical alternatives and / or solutions are. The Environment isn?t my religion; it?s a scientific and engineering problem.

Posted by GarryGR

27th Jul 2010

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Plastic Bottles

West Paw Design www.westpawdesign.com uses recycled plastic bottles as the filling in its pet beds. That's a great way to reuse recycled plastic.

Posted by abschumann

8th Apr

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