Ever wonder where that plastic bottle you tossed in the recycling bin ends up?
It’s hard to imagine just how significantly we rely on plastic, a catch-all term for a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials derived from organic products. To give you an idea, it’s estimated that global plastic consumption has risen from 5.5 million tons in the 1950s to nearly 300 million tons per day.
Plastic’s ubiquitousness is especially visible on every street corner of America, where single-use bottles overflow from recycling bins. Imagine this: Americans go through about 2.5 million plastic bottles each hour. But after the refreshment is gulped and the container is tossed, the journey of the plastic bottles has just begun.