About 50 billion plastic water bottles are consumed around the world each year. This does not include the billions of other plastic materials littering the globe, chocking our environment in more ways than one.
In the United States alone, which is less than 5 percent of the over 7.4 billion population, about 30 billion bottles are used annually, followed by Mexico, Brazil, and China, with its population of 1.37 billion.
Unfortunately, the recycling rate in the United States is only 23 percent, obviously because 77 percent of the people don’t care and irresponsibly choose to be non-compliant, wasting 38 billion water plastic bottles (worth $1 billion of plastic) each year. In Europe, it was estimated that around 60 million plastic bottles were recycled last year, at about a 50 percent recycling rate.
It takes more than 17 barrels of oil a year to meet America’s need for bottled water, “enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.” In the United States alone, the energy wasted using bottled water would be “enough to power 190,000 homes. Worldwide, the estimate is 50 million barrels of oil a year.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, which is produced from crude oil, is what most plastic bottles are made from. In the process of oil extraction, greenhouse gasses are released, which harm the environment, and production of plastic spews toxins into our environment. The initial step is the creation of plastic pellets from distilled oil, which are then melted down by the bottle producers into pre-formed plastic test tubes. The bottling firms then heat and expand these tubes to the shape and size they need. The water bottling plant then sterilizes and fills the plastic bottles with filtered water. Then they are capped, labeled and packed into cases for shipment.
The oil-free option in manufacturing water bottles is the use of bioplastic, a material made from plant materials (corn or sugarcane) instead of petroleum. Bioplastics are biodegradable but are still not totally eco-friendly. Its production requires huge amounts of water, which farmers could use, especially in regions of the world where water is scarce.
Producing one bottle of filtered water uses three times the same amount of water, according to the Pacific Institute. That concentrated water extraction in areas where bottling plants are ”can lead to drops in the water table, making local communities suffer from water shortages.”
The transport of bottled water from the plant to the stores and consumers are climate and fuel-intensive. It has been estimated that in some cases a liter of gasoline is needed to transport a bottle of water. The Earth Policy Institute reports that “about one in four bottles of water crosses at least one international border by boat, train or truck before being consumed.” And all these modes emits carbon dioxide, aggravating climate change.
Today, most plastic bottles end up as litter and dumped in landfills and waterways, where they take hundreds of years to decompose. On the other hand, recycled plastic bottles are shredded and melted back into pellets and sold to plants that manufacture recycled plastic products, including fleece used in blankets and clothing, among others. Plastic garbage in oceans “is a major ecology problem, polluting the water and threatening sea creatures and birds.” According to Ocean Conservatory, there are over 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. Marine life, birds, and other animals eat them and die.
Man’s cruelty to Mother Earth
Besides not caring enough to recycle plastic bottles, man’s cruelty to Mother Earth includes his actions that sabotage our eco-system.
It does not take an Einstein to understand that clean air, pure water and an uncontaminated environment are conducive to health and longevity. In certain parts of the world, like in the serene Okinawa to the verdant valleys of Ecuador to the unspoiled hills of the Himalayas, a significant number of people normally live to 100 years old. A common denominator among these centenarians is an environment that is nature’s best, untainted by the toxic byproducts of the advances in technology in this modern world of ours.
Today, in most parts of the earth, especially in well-developed cities, human beings are no longer living in harmony with nature. They have become hostile to the environment, gradually killing it with the emission of poisonous gases and deadly chemicals from factories. Toxic smokes from vehicles pollute the air and deplete the ozone layer, which protects us from excessive solar radiation. Noxious substances we use at home for cleaning eventually end up in rivers and oceans, destroy bodies of water and their inhabitants, contaminate our drinking water, and destroy our forests. Other human activities negatively alter the “homeostasis” in our world and the equilibrium in our environment.
These and other unwise human behaviors, mostly self-inflicted, and his cruelty to Mother Nature have boomeranged. Our immune system as a species, for one thing, has been adversely affected. Various diseases — including cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure — have increased, especially in the last century or so. Our misadventures are now haunting us, our children, and the future generations.
The major concerns
Water in a plastic bottle that contains Bisphenol A (BPA) could be toxic to the body, especially when exposed to heat (microwave or the sun).
There are greater fears, which are becoming more evident and valid:
the deadly impact of plastic on all life forms; the adverse effects of carbon footprints during transport; plastic garbage pollution; and choking and killing life forms. Its non-biodegradable nature leads to tons and mountains of plastic trash that litter the earth, occupying our valuable space, to linger for centuries, and with no end in sight.
Our individual responsibility
Since this dilemma directly impacts our individual life, it is our collective responsibility as a global community to be proactive and pre-emptive in protecting our environment, Mother Earth — the only inhabitable and hospitable home we have — from any and all abuses against our eco-system.
While the governments around the world are trying (unfortunately at a snail’s pace) to remedy this dire global situation, it behooves us, earthlings, to be proactive and pre-emptive and do our daily share in showing more respect and love for our environment. After all, this is the only home we’ve got today. And destroying it is like exploding a bomb on board a plane we are in.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus in Northwest Indiana and chairman of cardiac surgery from 1997 to 2010 at Cebu Doctors University Hospital, where he holds the title of Physician Emeritus in Surgery, is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Philippine College of Surgeons, and the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. He is the chairman of the Filipino United Network – USA, a 501(c)(3) humanitarian foundation in the United States. Email: [email protected]
