All of us use plastic bottles. Plastic has become a big part of everyone lives. Plastic is better than glass because it is lighter and does not break as easily. Plastic comes in many forms but it is most often used to make plastic bottles. Plastic is one of the many materials that can be recycled yet many people choose not to do so.
There are five areas in which recycling plastic bottles can benefit you, your loved ones, and the environment. These five areas include:
1. Oil
2. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
3. Energy
4. Reuse
5. Landfill Space
Conserve our Oil
We all know how precious oil is today, in fact, it is so precious that it has caused the price of gas, foods, and other items to jump dramatically. However, many people do not realize that by recycling plastic bottles, we are saving oil. One ton of recycled plastic bottles can save almost four barrels of oil.
Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction
Recycled items take less processing. That means that the new manufacturing does not require as much energy and does not emit as much pollution, which means a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Conserving Our Energy
Plastic bottles used in water and soft drink bottles are made of what is called Polyethylene Terephthalate, also known as PET. Just one pound of recycled PET can save as much as twelve-thousand BTU’s in energy. At the same time, as mentioned previously, it takes two-thirds less energy to manufacture from recycled products, as it does to create new.
Reuse Benefits
What many people do not understand about recycling is that what you see now, is not always what it will be later. In many cases, that plastic bottle you are now drinking out of may be something totally different once it is recycled. Plastic bottles may be recycled to create many different products such as carpeting, clothing, or decking. What you see, is not always what you get when it comes to recycling.
Save Our Landfills
One of the biggest problems today is that our landfills are quickly filling up and are running out of space. New landfills need to be created which will take up more space and puts more trash into our earth. You may be thinking how much room can one plastic bottle really take. The point is that if everyone thinks that way, think of how many plastic bottles that is.
If just a ton of plastic bottles is recycled that can free up 7.4 cubic yards in our landfills. That’s a lot of space that is being used unnecessarily, when there are recycling avenues everywhere that you turn.
• In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled about 23 percent of them. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
• Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon, and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label.
• According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 28.3 gallons of bottled water in 2006.
• It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year’s supply of bottled water. That’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars.
• Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfill waste.
• In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on iPods or movie tickets.
• Plastic bottles can take up to 1000 years before they begin to decompose.
As you can see, there are many benefits of recycling plastic bottles.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK…..KEEP TURNING GREEN
Great post. We can all make a difference. Putting up figures like that gives impact and helps to show what a difference we can make by doing such a simple thing as recycling every bottle.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Hi Mandy,
Thanks again for all of your comments. We are really trying to find different ways to share all of the information we have found in our research for our eBook that we are creating for the class as our first product. My wife has now put together a series of 5 White Papers that we are going to share with our followers from this site. They will all deal with Saving Money Going Green….Hmmmm I think that is a good name for the series. I plan to do that via AWeber broadcast. So be looking for that pretty soon. There will be five emails, one for each White Paper.
The next endeavor will be to try to automate new opt-in’s to receive it. This will be tricky as I have not set up a Buterfly site as yet with the database for all the information and products and all. But I’ll figure that out before the end of the class….I hope!
See you in class.
Jay
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