Millions of plastic bottles are thrown away every day with huge environmental consequences, what are the better options?
By
The numbers involved are staggering. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on every minute of every day a million plastic bottles are purchased worldwide. But, for every six plastic water bottles bought only one of them will be recycled. In the UK alone, around 16 million plastic bottles are not recycled each year.
Scary stuff, but it gets scarier. Worldwide, 80 per cent of those unrecycled bottles end up slowly decomposing in land fill sites. And when we say slowly, we really mean slowly. The average plastic bottle takes 450 years to decompose. If we went back in time 450 years then Queen Elizabeth I would be on the English throne and Australia was yet to be discovered by Europeans! But slow decompensation isn’t the only bad news. Even if plastic bottles do eventually decompose, they don’t do so in an environmentally kind manner. Instead, they turn into microplastics, which already permeate every corner of our planet and even our own bodies. It’s been estimated that the oceans already contain 24 trillion pieces of microplastic (the equivalent of 30 billion half litre water bottles).
The use of plastic bottles isn’t a problem that’s going away either. According to the Environmental Audit Committee, consumption of bottled water has doubled over the last 20 years, with over seven billion plastic water bottles used each year in the UK alone.
So, it’s clear that humanity has an unhealthy obsession to plastic bottles. But, what can we do about it? The answer of course are reuseable alternatives. There are plenty of reuseable water bottles on the market, but even many of these have their own environmental footprints. For example, mining materials like aluminium and steel, or manufacturing glass, leads to the release of greenhouse gases as well as carcinogenic and toxic particulates. Many reuseable water bottles are produced in Asia and then shipped to markets in Europe and elsewhere, which of course adds to the bottles carbon footprint.
So, with all this in mind what is the most environmentally friendly water bottle?
- Stainless steel: Stainless-steel bottles are very long lasting and don’t develop any nasty tastes or smells (so long as you clean it frequently!). Go for a double insulated one to avoid drinks getting too hot or cold. However, be aware that most stainless steel bottles are made in Asia (Europe doesn’t have high enough grade stainless steel to be used in food products) and the shipping process adds to their environmental footprint.
- Glass: A glass bottle has good environmental credentials. It can be recycled again and again and it contains no harmful products. But, glass can shatter like, well, glass…
- Silicone: Silicone water bottles have a lot going for them. They’re flexible, lightweight, strong and easy to clean. On the negative side silicone is not biodegradable or recyclable.
- Bamboo: Bamboo water bottles are a fairly new development and they might be the most environmentally sound of all the options. They’re totally biodegradable and break down quickly, they’re lightweight, very strong, cheap and bamboo, which grows very quickly, contains natural antimicrobial features that help prevent bacterial build-up, which can be a problem with many other water bottles.
Related articles:
