The world’s consumption of plastic has grown explosively in the last decade, and is expected to continue to grow to over half a trillion plastic bottles annually by 2021. One of the key drivers of plastic pollution is the immense demand for bottled water. Although the polyethylene terephthalate used in most beverage bottles can be recycled, the sheer scale of consumption makes it very hard to maintain adequate recycling capacity, so only about 7 percent of the plastic bottles sold each year become new plastic bottles.

Key Takeaways:

• Most plastic bottles used for water or soda is made from polyethylene terephthalate, which can be recycled.
• Less than half of the plastic bottles purchased in 2016 were collected for recycling.
• If you regularly consume seafood, you are ingesting pas many as 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year.

“More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/a-million-a-minute-worlds-plastic-bottle-binge-as-dangerous-as-climate-change