Fact Sheet: Single-Use Plastics

Man buys about 1,000,000 PET bottles per minute. [3] In the United States, only about 23% of PET bottles are recycled [4].

Americans buy about 50 billion bottles a year, and each person in the United States buys about 13 bottles in a month! This means that you can save an average of 156 bottles per year using reusable water bottles. [Five]

It is estimated that 4 trillion plastic bags are used each year around the world. Only 1% plastic bags can be recycled. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags each year. This is about 307 bags per person! Switching to a reusable shopping bag eliminates all waste. [7]

500,000 straws are used every day throughout the world. [8] Refusing the straw is becoming a trend.

We consume 500 billion disposable cups a year. Americans only lose 25 million styrene foam coffee cups a year. Styrofoam can not be completely recycled. Most of the polystyrene foam that is being disposed today remains in the landfill even after 500 years. [Ten]

The main reason for the increase in plastic production is plastic packaging. Plastic packaging accounts for 42% of all non-fiber plastics manufactured in 2015, plus 52% of plastic waste.

Disposable plastics rarely go into landfills or be recycled. [11] Of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually, 32% remains in the ocean, equivalent to pouring plastic garbage trucks into the sea every minute. It is expected to increase to 2 times per minute by 2030 and 4 times per minute by 2050. By 2050, this may mean more plastics in the world ocean than fish. [12] Choosing to purchase products with fewer or no packaging creates a huge difference.

Even if disposable plastic is sent to landfill (3,091 active landfill sites in the US alone), they are not harmless. Landfill liners can leak harmful pollutants into the catchment area and plastics at the top of the landfill may be carried away by the wind. [13] The best way to reduce disposable plastic contamination is to reduce individual plastic consumption. 3

The big problem is disposable plastic. It is a water bottle, a food container, a plastic bag, a cutlery and all the plastics you used (or not used at all), then discarded. Unfortunately, most of the plastic can be recycled, but unfortunately they will eventually burn or be thrown into the landfill or simply be thrown into the ocean. Even more sadly, most of the disposable plastics we are using are completely unnecessary. All unnecessary waste from half-drunk bottles will be stopped. I am still having big problems in Lebanon, and people are still paying for still water almost anywhere. Of course this is because we can not drink tap water absolutely. This means that the company still has to pay in order to get the water suitable for drinking. Therefore, it is a wonderful organization that wants to provide water free, and wants to accept this additional cost without paying additional cost to the customer.

Do you want to save more and spend less? Almost all disposable products can be replaced with reusable alternatives. Consider a plastic bottle. Mineral water is 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. In fact, replacing 150 tap water with tap water can save about $ 225. First of all, please join the "No Meat Monday" campaign. According to the Grace Foundation, "You can not reduce the risk of preventable chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity with meat once a week." The following is your environmental statistics. Individuals eat only meat and cheese a day a week, save the same energy and resources as reducing the use of 6 million cars.

According to a series of fact sheet on plastics safety proposed by the American Plastics Council and SPE, "Plastic Products!" Plastics play an important role in ensuring our safety and improving the quality of life . . As a plastic engineer, you are aware of the contribution of plastic to our daily lives. For example, plastic protects our food from bacteria and protects bullets from police. Plastics also help limb amputers to walk again, and athletes participate again in the competition. Indeed, plastic can be said to be useful for us to live in the way we desire.