The Life Cycle of A Reusable Water Bottle vs A Disposable Bottle

July 24, 2019

The Life Cycle of A Reusable Water Bottle vs A Disposable Bottle

Nowadays, everyone is carrying a reusable water bottle. With accusations that such a minor lifestyle change will make no difference to the condition of our planet, we wanted to show the difference between the journeys that both options would take.

A Disposable Plastic Water Bottle:

1. Oil is extracted to be able to make the plastic

2. A high emission factory, powered by other fossil fuels turns the oil into plastic pellets. The oil must be bonded with natural gas in order to make plastic

3. Further energy is used to heat and shape the bottle

4. The bottles are filled with water and transported to where they will be sold… more emissions!

5. We buy and enjoy a nice refreshing bottle of water

6. We throw out the bottle of water:

· We might do our bit for the planet and recycle the bottle
so it is taken to a factory and remade into something new. But the other plastic item that it becomes will probably be thrown out and finish its lifecycle in landfill anyway.
· 80% of bottles aren’t recycled and will end up in landfill where they’ll be burnt releasing fumes into the atmosphere. Water that fills landfill also consumes the plastic compounds making some of it highly toxic with the ability to harm ecosystems.
· If bottles are left to decompose, this can take thousands of years when it’s sat taking up space.
· Some end up being carried to the ocean where rubbish accumulates and harms sea life. It won’t breakdown in the ocean so is likely to stay there forever

All plastic that we use for water is new plastic as for health reasons we can’t use recycled plastic for this purpose. This means that every plastic bottle has more than 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide behind it. Excluding the water inside the bottle as well, 16.4 billion gallons of water are involved in the process.

A Reusable Water Bottle

1. Fossil fuels will be used to power the production process and oil and gas still need to be bonded in order to make plastic. BUT the

production of one aluminium bottle is the same as twenty four disposable bottles. You’ll also be able to use that aluminium bottle for years. With a plastic bottle, reusing it means much less plastic. needs to be produced so a lot of these resources and energy emissions will be saved.

2. Once the bottle has been produced, it gets transported to be sold… emissions are released here

3. We buy and enjoy hundreds or even thousands of bottles of water, saving on many more disposable ones

4. We continue to use our bottle for years meaning we are saving thousands of bottles from ending up in landfill or the ocean

5. We may eventually dispose of it where it is likely to be recycled or end up in landfill. BUT one bottle every few years makes up for thousands that would have been subjected to this fate otherwise!