2 Million Plastic Bottles Every 5 Minutes

Just lately I seem to be seeing or hearing incredible numbers everywhere. Well, they seem incredible to me anyway.

Yesterday I was doing my two hour drive back from Collie; where I have to go for two days each week as part of my work. I had the radio on in the background, as one tends to do on long trips. I am not even sure what station I was listening to just above the road noise drone, but I think it was Triple-J. Every hour or every half hour, I am not sure which, they give a news bulletin. At the end of the news bulletin they provided an “interesting” fact and the fact I heard was that in the USA alone every five minutes 2 million plastic bottles are disposed of.

Assuming this “fact” is in fact a fact, then that means every hour Americans dispose of 24,000,000 (24 million) plastic bottles. Every day they dispose of 576,000,000 plastic bottles. That works out to over 4 billion each week.

Using the last population figures I heard of for America, which was 307 million, that would mean that every man, woman, and child in America chucked out about 13 plastic bottles last week, and they will do it again next week, and the week after, and ….. so on.

OMG. And that is just America! They only make up just over 5 percent of the world’s population!! (Double shriek)

That’s where all the friggin crude oil is being used. Making plastic bottles.

I wonder how many plastic bottles they make from one gallon (4.546 litres) of crude? I might have to look that up.