Plastic bottles are a common product made from petroleum or bioplastics. The oil must be extracted and sent to a processing plant before being distilled to create plastic pellets. These pellets are melted into preforms and then heated to create the final bottle. After use, plastic bottles can be reused, recycled, or thrown away. However, recycling rates are low globally, and plastic bottles can take hundreds of years to decompose in landfills, posing a serious threat to the environment.
Plastic bottles are used to package a wide variety of things, from juices to sodas, and play a ubiquitous role in many consumers’ lives, along with other plastic products. With a growing awareness of the environmental issues surrounding plastics, many people have become interested in the life cycles of plastic products, from manufacturing to eventual disposal in a landfill or recycling facility. Being aware of the process behind the production of plastics can encourage consumers to think more carefully about how they use and dispose of these plastics. Because plastic bottles are a highly visible form of plastic use, they are an easy target for activism and education.
The life cycle of a plastic bottle obviously begins with the creation of the plastic used to make it. The vast majority of bottles are made from petroleum, some of which comes from three billion year old deposits. Some manufacturers use bioplastics made from plant materials to create their bottles, out of concern for the environment.
In the case of a petroleum-based bottle, the oil must be extracted before being sent to a processing plant and then distilled to separate out the various hydrocarbons it contains. Oil extraction is done around the world in a variety of locations and has a range of environmental impacts. In areas where oil is extracted from the seabed, for example, oil spills are common and regions such as the Middle East are notorious for their highly polluting oil fires, caused by intentional or accidental burning of oil fields. In some countries, oil extraction is also linked to a variety of social problems. Nigeria, for example, has a notoriously troubled oil industry; workers in the oil sector are often poorly paid and exposed to very dangerous conditions, and periodic devastating fires along pipelines are not uncommon.
Once the oil has been extracted, it is typically moved into container tankers for shipment to refinery facilities. In a refinery, oil may undergo a variety of distillation processes, such as fractional distillation, in which crude oil is heated, causing its various components to separate so that the refinery can produce gas, fuel oil, plastic and a variety of other products. Crude oil can also be “cracked” with chemical catalysts to generate hydrocarbon chains of the desired length; this practice is common, because the demand for various petroleum products fluctuates constantly, and cracking ensures that the oil is used extremely efficiently and generates as much profit as possible.
Most plastic bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, and nearly all water bottles are made from virgin plastic; it is estimated that 30% of the world’s PET goes into these bottles. The plastic is obtained by mixing hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil with chemical catalysts, triggering polymerization. Next, manufacturers produce plastic pellets, which are melted into “preforms,” which look like small test tubes; the preforms, in turn, can be heated, causing them to expand and transform into conventional water bottles. Bottling companies typically order preforms, expanding water bottles at their facilities as needed.
Water bottles made from bioplastics are made from plant materials that are processed to form polymers. Bioplastics are believed to be better for the environment, as they don’t require the extraction and handling of crude oil, a non-renewable resource, and the companies that make them often try to use the best possible environmental practices. Furthermore, bioplastics decompose quickly; the life cycle of a plastic bottle made from bioplastic is extremely short. In fact, some bioplastic bottles will even start to warp and leak if they’re stored on the shelf for too long.
However, bioplastics are not without environmental problems. Producing such plastics requires devoting large areas of agricultural land to producing crops for plastics, rather than food, and these crops consume large amounts of water, fuel and other resources. Bioplastics also need to be produced with the assistance of a variety of chemicals and, like regular plastics, require shipping to a final destination, consuming more fuel along the way. Because they’re designed to be disposable while still being relatively environmentally friendly, some activists fear they could also distract consumers from more environmentally friendly choices, such as reusable glass and metal containers.
Depending on the size of a bottling plant, a company will either order preforms and use them as needed, or order plastic bottles that are ready to use. The bottles must be sterilized so that they are drink-safe, then they are filled, capped, labeled, packed into crates, and prepared for shipment. At this stage of the lifecycle, the bottle could end up in any number of places, from a refugee relief camp to the shelf of a high-end supermarket.
A distinct advantage of plastic bottles, in the eyes of manufacturers, is that they are extremely sturdy, making it much easier to ship drinks in plastic than glass, cardboard, metal and other containers. These bottles are also extremely lightweight, with manufacturers constantly coming up with new ways to use less plastic in their containers to reduce manufacturing and shipping costs. Shipping materials in lightweight materials is also good for the environment, as it reduces fuel costs.
Once a PET plastic bottle ends up in the hands of an end consumer, it has three possible fates after its contents have been consumed: it can be reused, recycled or thrown away. Despite the fact that most bottles are made from PET plastic and this plastic is very easy to recycle, the recycling rates for these bottles are actually very low globally. Anywhere between 15-35% of plastic bottles end up in recycling plants, depending on the region, with the rest ending up in landfills or as trash. Some countries have attempted to address low recycling rates with incentives, but because they are cheap and easily accessible, many of these programs have not worked.
Many people believe that reuse, followed by recycling, is the best use for a plastic bottle. PET plastic can be reused, although people should avoid using it to hold hot or corrosive materials and should take care to wash such bottles thoroughly. These bottles can be very hospitable to bacteria, potentially causing a health risk to people who drink from them. After a bottle has been reused as many times as possible, it should ideally be recycled.
In recycling, plastic bottles are shredded into shavings which are then sterilized and sold to companies that produce products made from recycled plastics. This lifecycle stage can get quite interesting, as these plastic chips can be used for everything from fleece blankets to artificial lumber. Many products made with recycled plastic clearly indicate this, for consumers who would rather promote the use of recycled, rather than virgin, plastic.
When a plastic bottle enters a landfill, it can take hundreds of years to decompose and can have a profound environmental impact. The journey to landfill is often quite long, as bottles are a very common form of waste around the world, requiring volunteers or government agencies to collect such bottles and take them to a recycling facility or other forms of disposal. As plastic bottles decompose, they take up valuable landfill space and some harmful chemicals leach into the ground, potentially polluting soil and water.
Because landfills are so dense, some scientists fear the rate of decay in landfills may be even slower than previously assumed, as conditions are not optimal for rupture. Landfills in general are a serious problem in many parts of the world, containing a large mix of potentially recyclable items, including precious metals, along with potentially hazardous and toxic products. Plastic bottles take up an alarming amount of landfill space, especially when you consider that they shouldn’t be in landfills at all.
Not all discarded plastic bottles end up in landfills either. The world’s oceans are home to an ever-growing collection of plastics, particularly in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. These plastics come from trash, poorly maintained landfills, spilled shipping containers and a variety of other sources, and take centuries to break down, even assisted by corrosive salt water and UV radiation. The proliferation of plastic in the world’s oceans poses a serious threat to many marine organisms, and some scientists fear that, instead of breaking down completely, the plastic will break down into very small segments that could be eaten by microscopic organisms.
This could have serious environmental repercussions, as these organisms are not equipped to digest plastic. Therefore they could die off en masse or be consumed by animals further up the food chain. This could potentially cause such predatory organisms to accumulate a variety of hazardous substances used in plastic production, leading to disruption of the health of the world’s oceans and impacting the health of animals (including humans) that use these organisms as food source.
In the case of plastic bottles made from bioplastics, the life cycle is slightly different. Many of these bottles are designed to be disposable and compost quickly under the right conditions, typically those found in a municipal composting facility, rather than a home compost pile. Once composted, bioplastics simply return to Earth; when such plastics end up in landfills, they also degrade, although the decay process can take longer, due to lack of aeration in landfills.
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