It's been a long time coming, but this year I finally decided to end my toxic relationship with plastic. While we still see each other from time to time, I'm working on shutting the door for good.
So, what's so bad about plastic? It's flexible, lightweight and inexpensive. Here are a few more facts about plastic:
1. Plastics are forever. Plastics cannot degrade or be absorbed back in to the earth. Plastics can be incinerated, releasing chemical-laden air pollution. It may take 20 minutes to drink a diet coke, but the bottle will still be around centuries from now. That seems a little disproportionate to me.
2. Plastics are made from petroleum. As in the petroleum that gasoline comes from. Picture a standard 12 ounce water bottle. Imagine it's filled up a quarter of the way with oil. That's how much petroleum was used to produce the bottle. That's how much petroleum was diverted from the gas pump to create a single use container.
3. Plastics cannot be recycled in the conventional sense. Unlike glass and metal, plastics cannot be recycled in to similar products. When plastics are heated during the recycling process, they lose structural strength. This means plastic that was once a diet coke bottle is no longer strong enough to become another diet coke bottle. Most plastics are "downcycled" meaning they become weaker products like carpet or synthetic lumber. After these downcycled products are used, they head to the landfill to hunker down for the next millennium.
I have many more facts to share, but I'll save them for another post.
Want to fact check me?
http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/
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