2. Mountains of Plastic
While it would be nice to think that all plastic ends up in a recycling plant once it is done being used, that simply is not true. As has been mentioned, a majority of plastics actually don’t end up making it to a recycling facility to be manufactured into a new object. Sadly, 80 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States each year end up in a landfill. That’s roughly 38 billion water bottles! Numbers for plastic grocery bags are even worse. Between 0.5 and three percent of plastic bags are recycled, sending an estimated 100 billion plastic bags to landfills in America each year.
With such poor statistics on recycling, it is obvious that the bulk of plastic has to go somewhere once it is discarded. And that somewhere typically ends up being a landfill. According to Zero Waste America, there are 3,091 active landfills in the United States. And while landfills are designed to withhold their materials and seclude them from the surrounding environment, landfills end up leaking a variety of nasty pollutants. Leachate, liquid that forms as materials break down in a landfill, often leaks through the liners of the landfill and can pollute groundwater below. And greenhouse gases like methane are produced from decaying material inside landfills, leaking into the atmosphere and furthering climate change. Plus, plastic has a tendency of finding its way out of landfills … and ends up in local waterways