Plastic bottles pollution is a terrible and severe threat to the environment. From what the Guardian indicates, since the 1950s, an estimation of over 8.3 billion tons of plastics have been produced around the world. More than a million plastic bottles are bought in a minute with the Americans alone purchase close to 29 billion bottles yearly. However, only one in every six plastic bottles undergoes recycling with the rest being exposed in the environment. The fact that plastic water bottles photo-degrade rather than biodegrading taking at many years for one to decompose means there is a big problem. These plastic water bottles leak pollutants into water and soil causing a severe environmental threat and waste of valuable resources hence pollution. The question is, how can we stop polluting the earth with plastic bottles?
However, the plastic bottle manufacturers who are the producers believe that much can be achieved through effective plastic waste management. This group states collective support for waste collection can establish value chains which can create jobs and wealth. They have made efforts to engage recycling companies since only 5 percent of the total bottles produced are recycled yearly. They are concerned with this issue since they make a massive profit out of selling plastic bottled water. On the part of consumers, they still do not feel bad about buying plastic bottled water. Despite the call to reduce plastic bottles pollution, consumers believe less has been done to help them have an alternative to purchasing plastic bottled water. They feel more reusable bottles should be produced and water made available at transport hubs like bus stations and airports. The environment is the most affected by the plastic bottle pollution following the increased use of plastic water bottles. The environmental authority has had several attempts to ban on the use plastic like in Kenya, China, France, and Italy among others. There have also been numerous calls from the authorities to encourage recycling by reusing of the plastic bottles and adopt effective disposal ways.
Soil and water have been the most affected with the plastic water bottles which finally find their ways into the landfill and in the rivers before being carried to the oceans. Concerns in the recent have risen on how the oceans are much becoming the primary targets for plastic bottle pollution due to their vulnerability to the issue. For instance, in South Pacific, an uninhabited coral atoll, close to 18 tones of the plastic bottles were found in the islands despite being the most remote island. Similar results have been observed in Arctic beaches despite their remoteness. The same concern has been raised on the contamination of groundwater, and the safety of the tap water people access in urban areas. Thus, soil and water bodies are the most areas where plastic bottle pollution occur and has been a challenge for human and other organic habitation. Caring will lower the amount of plastic getting into landfills and water bodies besides saving natural habitats and hundreds of dollars.
The issue of plastic bottle pollution has been in existence as early as the 1940s when first the massive usage of material was popularized. Since then there has been a colossal estimation of a large amount of the tons of plastic materials that have been produced as shown in the bar graph below. Most of the plastics that were produced by 1950s still exist either in the soil or in water as the petrochemical compound used to make them take over 1000 years before they can decompose. Ironically, human beings are the number one agent of plastic bottle pollution and the first group to take up the cautionary responsibility to clean the environment off the plastics. So the move makes them get in touch with the environment with the intention of safeguarding the natural resources such as water bodies and the soil where animals and humans themselves live.
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