We’re probably all guilty of having brought bottled of water at some point, since up until recently, the environmental cost of what was once considered a convenient way to stay hydrated weren’t fully appreciated or understood!
This explains why, over the last 15 years, the number of plastic water bottles consumed has doubled to 7.7 billion a year in the UK alone! Sadly, it’s been estimated than almost half of these bottles are NOT recycled and instead are littered, landfilled or incinerated – eventually ending up in our natural environment and oceans where they can take up to 700 years to dissolve. As if that wasn’t bad enough from an environmental perspective, the energy that is involved in bottle-making equates to some 24,000,000 litres of oil. Add this to the fuel expenditure of shipping and transporting said bottles, and it’s no surprise that ‘grab-and-go’ H2O is THE least energy efficient method of water supply in the history of mankind! The irony here is that, in the UK, we’re lucky enough to have some of the highest quality drinking water in the World - a fact which only adds weight to the message that we need to stop relying on single use plastic water bottles for our everyday hydration needs. This is the main aim of campaigns such as National Refill Day, which today has been pushing the case for reusing and refilling, not just as a way to save on plastic waste, but also on our own money, given that 90% of the cost of bottled water is the bottle itself!!
For more details visit the Refill website.