Plastiki, a boat made of more than 12,000 plastic drinking bottles, set sail 5 days ago from San Francisco on a journey across the Pacific Ocean to raise awareness for plastic pollution around the world. Over at Ralph Potts Vagabonding, the paid tribute to Palstiki's voyage and also shared some of their troubles with recycling. They said that, "Bottled water in the west is easy to avoid — after all our tap water is perfectly drinkable — but it’s tougher when you’re abroad in Africa, Asia and South America where the local water supply is suspect at best and sometimes even dangerous." I completely agree with them on this issue. Only having gone abroad a couple of times myself, I was always very conscious of making sure my drinking water was from a reliable source. While it is possible to bring a filter with you when you travel, it is sometimes hard to use it. Vagabonding and I both agree that there needs to be a better way to access clean water abroad.
On another note, here are some fun (or not so fun) facts about plastic:
- 2.5 million bottles are trashed every hour in the U.S.
- 90% of plastic materials used are not recycled
- Plastic accounts for 60%-80% of all marine pollution
- For every liter of bottled water that’s manufactured, another two liters of water are used to make it
No comments:
Post a Comment