And while this thread is still fresh . . .
The amout of non-biodegradeable plastic (all of it) is simply overwhelming.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5279230/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Bottled water is the single largest growth
area among all beverages, that includes alcohol, juices and soft
drinks. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over the last
decade, from 10.5 gallons in 1993 to 22.6 in 2003, according to the
Beverage Marketing Corporation.
The growth has been even more impressive in terms of water bottles sold: from 3.3 billion in 1997 to 15 billion in 2002.
Only about 12 percent of "custom" plastic
bottles, a category dominated by water, were recycled in 2003,
according to industry consultant R.W. Beck, Inc. That's 40 million
bottles a day that went into the trash or became litter. In contrast,
the recycling rate for plastic soft drink bottles is around 30 percent.
The low water bottle recycling rate also
impacts the overall recycling rate of all recyclable plastic
containers. That's fallen from 53 percent in 1994 to 19 percent in 2003.
Plastic bags are wicked bad too. (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/10/plastic_bags/print.html)
The plastic bag is
an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most
ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They're
made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent study
found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a
toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags
after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the
drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to
dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.. . . Only 1 percent of
plastic bags are recycled worldwide -- about 2 percent in the U.S. --
and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend
eternity in landfills, but that's not always the case.. . . Following the lead
of countries like Ireland, Bangladesh, South Africa, Thailand and
Taiwan, some U.S. cities are striking back against what they see as an
expensive, wasteful and unnecessary mess. This year, San Francisco and
Oakland outlawed the use of plastic bags in large grocery stores and
pharmacies, permitting only paper bags with at least 40 percent
recycled content or otherwise compostable bags.. . . The problem with
plastic bags isn't just where they end up, it's that they never seem to
end. "All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and
smaller pieces," says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth
Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague.
Plastic doesn't biodegrade. That means unless they've been incinerated
-- a noxious proposition -- every plastic bag you've ever used in your
entire life, including all those bags that the newspaper arrives in on
your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn't a sliver of a
chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and
will exist long after you're dead. . . The only salient
answer to paper or plastic is neither. Bring a reusable canvas bag,
says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist for the Natural
Resources Defense Council. However, if you have to make a choice
between the two, she recommends taking whichever bag you're more likely
to reuse the most times, since, like many products, the production of
plastic or paper bags has the biggest environmental impact, not the
disposal of them. "Reusing is a better option because it avoids the
purchase of another product."
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