Plastic
The proverbial elephant in the room
Life would be near impossible without it. But at the rate were going, we’ll be hard pressed to find where to store the waste.
Here are some visual representations of how much plastic the US consumes:
60,000: The number of plastic bags used in the U.S. every five seconds.
2,000,000: The number of plastic bottles used in the U.S. every five seconds.
And for the hell of it, lets make this an energy and national security issue. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that in the U.S. alone, an estimated 12,000,000 barrels of non-renewable petroleum oil are required to produce the 100 billion bags consumed annually. That’s over $500,000,000 the country could be saving to put towards clean, green energy. Additionally, the petroleum used to make only 14 plastic bags could drive a car 1 mile.
