Conversations That Matter: A billion plastic bottles
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Plastic is woven into the fabric of the human experience in every country in the world.
Plastic delivers water to your tap, it takes that same water away after it exits your sink. Plastic is wrapped around the wires in your home and it has reduced the likelihood of fire inside your home dramatically.
You can’t live without the stuff.
In most cases plastic is the better environmental choice. The life cycle assessment of plastic over glass for bottles tips in favour of plastic by a long shot. That is until that flimsy plastic bottle that is filled with a beverage gets tossed aside with no regard to where it will end up. The same is true of plastic over paper straws.
Plastic bottles in most advanced countries do not end up in the ocean or rivers, streams and lakes. They end up in landfills which is better than in a body of water. But, even in a landfill plastic poses problems.
The big problem is plastic that simply gets tossed aside.
David Katz identified this problem seven years ago and that motivated him to start the Plastic Bank.
“We worked with more than 17,000 individual collectors in Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt to collect plastic from vulnerable coastal communities,” he said. “Plastic Bank has now directed more than one billion plastic bottles from entering the world’s oceans. That’s 20 million kilograms of plastic.”
David Katz of Plastic Bank joined a Conversation That Matters about working to ensure plastic can be recycled, can be a part of the circular economy and can continue to play a positive role in people’s lives.
