Monday, April 22nd was Earth Day. This year’s theme is Planet versus Plastics. The Earth Day organization is calling for an end of plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60% reduction in the production of plastics by 2040 and an ultimate goal of building a plastic-free future for generations to come. How do you do that? They say plastic bags are a huge issue. Over 500 billion plastic bags were produced last year in the world. Bags that have only a few minutes of usefulness and then an afterlife of centuries as the decompose.
Another issue, plastic bottles. One hundred billion sold last year in the United States alone. While a few of them will be converted into things like park benches through recycling, but 95% will end up in a landfill. A little-known fact, it takes six times as much water to make a bottle than the bottle actually contains, and more plastic products have been produced in the last 10 years than were produced in the entire 20th century. Recycling will help, but the Earth Day organization would like to see production stopped completely before, what they call, planet meltdown.
