Reader Lars Winberg, 85, who has been an advocate for the environment throughout his adventurous life, makes an impassioned plea for a plastic-free future.
Plastic bottles of water on the supermarket shelves may look innocent, but they are far from innocent and only one of many plastic products that harm our oceans and rivers.
Why should we ban single use plastic water bottles? Let’s look at some statistics, which are really scary, to see why.
Globally, humans buy about one million single-use bottles a minute, according to earthday.org website, and over one thousand bottles per second are being discarded. These numbers are hard to imagine.
Around 32 percent of all plastic waste ends up in the oceans, where it is very harmful to our wildlife. That is the same as dumping one full garbage truck with plastic into our oceans every minute.
Scary, isn’t it? And these figures are only expected to grow. Especially when you realise that single use plastic bottles have only been around since 1947 and mass production by major manufacturers only started in 1978. That’s only 42 years ago, so we’d better start now to reverse the trend. Another 40 years will not only double it but most likely triple it unless we take some action.
It concerns me to see mountains of plastic drink bottles on the supermarket shelves. Many water bottles are only ordinary filtered water. And very expensive water, dearer than milk and petrol. It will take one or two litres of water to manufacture one water bottle – what a waste. Some towns and tourist spots around the world – among them our own Bundanoon, and San Francisco and Machu Picchu – have banned PET bottles, and good on them!
Wherever we are from, we should be asking councils to put in more water bubblers in popular meeting areas, as has been done along Gympie Terrace in Noosaville. Maybe then we could also ask our councils to ban the sale of single-use plastic bottles.
We should all use reusable bottles for drinking when out and about. You can buy one for less than $20 so it will pay for itself after four or five uses. Thereafter it is all free.
Don’t take my word alone on the figures. Check anywhere on the net re manufacturing, recycling and landfill – www.waterlogicaustralia.com.au and www.earthday.org for starters – and you, like me, will be concerned.
We don’t want to kill our oceans, I hope we can agree on that. Fish and seabirds are very much affected by plastic waste. A lot of small plastic pieces are found in the stomach of seabirds all around the world. And plastic pollution in the water is not always visible unless you travel by boat.
There are five or six major collections of plastic waste in our oceans. These collections are large whirlpools where waste is circling around for years, and in doing so, breaking up the plastic into smaller pieces which are even more dangerous for our wildlife. All our major oceans have them and it is estimated that the largest one is the same size as France. And they are growing. Earthday.org estimates that by the year 2050 there may be more plastic than fish in our oceans. Another scary thought.
So, what are we going to do about it? We can’t let this happen, can we?
It’s up to us to try to reduce our plastic waste, so let’s start with reducing single-use plastic bottles by replacing them with reusable bottles. We, the users, will not only save the natural environment, but also save ourselves money. We should encourage councils and other authorities to install more filtered drinking fountains in public access spaces, to also reduce the use of single-use plastic water bottles.
Do I hear you say, but they are recyclable? Potentially, yes, they are, but this can’t be relied upon to solve the problem of plastic waste. At present only around 10 percent of plastic is recycled in Australia each year (2019 figures). And there are problems with recycling – from being able to read the triangle symbol to knowing which symbols your council accepts for recycling.
So, let’s start today. Reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles we are buying. Better still, let’s ask policy makers to ban the sale of single-use plastic water bottles.
Readers are invited to get up on the NT Soapbox on issues concerning them. Contact editor@noosatoday.com.au
