it’s only one bottle! That is not a problem? Well, one bottle will not be such a big problem, but if you realize that we are throwing away almost 100 plastic bottles per year (source: Rijksoverheid) that one bottle changes, which you often still quickly pack with the pump, in a small plastic sample.
Micro-plastics
It is estimated that no less than 80 percent of current litter consists of packaging materials, including small PET bottles. It takes about 500 to 1000 years before your bottle is completely degraded to millions of small micro-plastics. That would mean that every bottle that has ever been bought and ended up in nature still exists. Smaller organisms see these micro-plastics for food, which makes it part of our food chain.
More plastic has already been produced in the 21st century than in the entire 20th century. Of all the plastic that is produced, we only use half of it once before we throw it away again.
Plastic Atlantis
Around 8 billion, 8,000,000,000 kilos of plastic disappear into the sea worldwide and become part of a gigantic floating island of plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (source: Scientias) This amount of plastic is only getting bigger, because we have started using more and more plastic. If we are not careful, this amount of plastic will grow ten times over the next ten years.
That one bottle
It should be clear that we must try to reduce the amount of plastic waste, and thus the amount of litter. What is your role in this? That one bottle can indeed make the difference. Even if you use the bottle only once, it will last forever. Do not throw away your bottle just like that, but think carefully about the consequences.
Do you really care about the environment? Choose a sustainable and recyclable solution!