Reduced Landfill Space
Plastic bottles take up a large amount of space in landfills, contributing to the Earth’s waste disposal problem. According to the Clean Air Council, residents of the United States alone throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. That’s 60 million plastic bottles each day. Landfills are intended to serve the immediate area’s disposal needs for an extended period of time. The high number of plastic bottles going into the garbage, however, significantly shortens a landfill’s lifespan. In 2009, North Carolina became the first state to enact a ban on disposing of plastic bottles in landfills.