Plastic Bottles Research Paper

Plastic Bottles Are Just Big Trouble “50 billion plastic bottles are used each year in America, that’s enough to wrap around the world 190 times,” (Leithman). Even though plastic bottles are popular now, when they were first created in 1947, they were very expensive and not many people bought them. However, in 1960, high-density polyethylene was made and introduced to the public. As the demand for plastic bottles escalated, consumers produced more plastic bottles for cheap, while selling the products at a low price as well. Plastic bottles are still around today, while being both beneficial and harmful. Plastic bottles need to be banned since they cause global warming, the reason for the death of many animals, and the cause of health defects …show more content…
In addition, many plastic bottles are not recycled and are thrown on the ground or put in landfills. A 16 ounce reusable bottle is around 12 dollars (Contigo). Let us take water for example. We are supposed to have 8-10 cups of water a day, which converts to 32 ounces a day. Since one water bottle is around 15 cents, you will have 4, 16 ounce water bottles a day you will spend 60-75 cents a day (Kmart). This converts to 22 to 24 dollars a year just on spending money for water bottles, double of what you would pay for buying a reusable bottle. This 22 to 24 dollars does not even account for the number of soda bottles, juice jugs, and other beverages consumed in a year. Furthermore, most all plastic bottles are not recycled, yet they are thrown away. “According to Brita: Americans throw away 35 billion plastic bottles a year,” (Hasselberger). Since we use 50 billion water bottles a year, that means only that 15 billion plastic bottles are recycled each year (Leithman). That is only 30 percent of all plastic bottles used in a year. The other 70 percent? They are thrown away into landfills or polluted, where they take 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade (Hasselberger). Overall, we can see why plastic bottles are not cheap and