America’s dirty little oil secret: Plastic Bottles and Bags

Recycling will only go so far to solve this. At the point in which you would recycle it, it has already been manufactured, used, and thrown away, using additional energy (and oil) at every step of the way. Realistically, this is a solvable problem that you yourself can make a change to actually make a difference.

The best thing that everyone can do is to simply not use these products as much as possible. It may seem obvious once you think about it, but you can bring your own bags to any store. My wife and I have been doing this for over a year now. It saves from having to use a throw away bags (or driving somewhere to recycle them) and feels great that you're helping to solve the problem and help the environment.

Here's another thing you can do: If you can carry the item you're purchasing up the register, you don't need a bag to carry it out of the store. It's so ridicules that if I go somewhere to buy a tube of toothpaste that they'll automatically put it in a bag. I'm pretty sure I'm capable of carrying a tube of toothpaste to my car.

Another thing you can do is simple buy a good quality water bottle and fill it with your own water instead of buying bottled water all of the time.

There's seriously a lot that people could come up with if we just all stop and think about things logically and reasonably on how all of us can make a difference.

Comments (15)

- willy1234x1
Well look at what's coming up after being neglected for so many years?
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- webaddict
World figures? 154.3 billion water bottles and 500 billion - 1 trillion bags= 147.4 - 207.4 million barrels of oil a year.
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- francinedancertv
have you any pix.of francine dancer?
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- bertbagshaw
this is quite preposterous

that was my word for the day

expect nothing more for a year
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- MishaA
That's really interesting facet to the problem.
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- gnuboss
wow, some interesting tidbits in there. Makes me think about how many bottles i re use or don't
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- devassocx
yes, we use a lot of plastic bottles and bags...I don't think its a problem to go crazy about.

If this stuff goes into landfills or is concentrated somewhere then it can potentially be recycled at some point.

So don't get all up tight about this...much bigger problems to worry about
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- miller.donna
When you see statistics like that it really hits home just how much impact (positive or negative) we can have on the environment.
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- vinaya_babu
Make recycling mandatory with the manufactures of raw material,using it for landfill is a waste of oil resources.
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- ravenber
Recycling will only go so far to solve this. At the point in which you would recycle it, it has already been manufactured, used, and thrown away, using additional energy (and oil) at every step of the way. Realistically, this is a solvable problem that you yourself can make a change to actually make a difference.

The best thing that everyone can do is to simply not use these products as much as possible. It may seem obvious once you think about it, but you can bring your own bags to any store. My wife and I have been doing this for over a year now. It saves from having to use a throw away bags (or driving somewhere to recycle them) and feels great that you're helping to solve the problem and help the environment.

Here's another thing you can do: If you can carry the item you're purchasing up the register, you don't need a bag to carry it out of the store. It's so ridicules that if I go somewhere to buy a tube of toothpaste that they'll automatically put it in a bag. I'm pretty sure I'm capable of carrying a tube of toothpaste to my car.

Another thing you can do is simple buy a good quality water bottle and fill it with your own water instead of buying bottled water all of the time.

There's seriously a lot that people could come up with if we just all stop and think about things logically and reasonably on how all of us can make a difference.
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- 1 reply
1. - cornelius2855
  @ravenber It would seen to me is that we are better off recycle al this so that we don't con't to fill our land with dumb things.
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- Panama
Agree with ravenber - we have to 'stop the madness!'. We use reusable cloth bags for our groceries. When they wear out we know they will decompose quickly and they actually make life easier once you get in the habit of carrying them with you to the store. We also traded in all of our plastic sports bottles for stainless steel washable ones - these things will last us a lifetime! There are so many other small efforts which can make a huge difference. Thanks for keeping stats and info like this in the public eye so we all start to make changes.
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- francinedancertv
@willy1234x1 cool
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- francinedancertv
@francinedancertv im looking for an apartment and dancing job
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- cornelius2855
What I want to know is ho much is it going to cost to recycle all this?
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