What really happens to the plastic you throw away Emma Bryce
This is the story of three plastic bottles,
empty and discarded.
Their journeys are about to diverge
with outcomes that impact nothing less than the fate of the planet.
But they weren't always this way.
To understand where these bottles end up, we must first explore their origins.
To understand where these bottles end up, we must first explore their origins.
The heroes of our story were conceived in this oil refinery.
The plastic in their bodies
was formed by chemically bonding oil and gas molecules together
to make monomers.
In turn, these monomers were bonded into long polymer chains to make plastic
in the form of millions of pellets.
Those were melted at manufacturing plants and reformed in molds
to create the resilient material that makes up the triplets' bodies
Machines filled the bottles with sweet bubbily liquid
and they were then wrapped, shipped, bought, opened, consumed
and unceremoniously discarded.
And now here they lie,
poised at the edge of the unknown.
Bottle one, like hundreds of millions of tons of his plastic brethren,
ends up in a landfill.
This huge dump expands each day