Plastic pollution is everywhere, and it’s not just the plastic water bottle floating in the stream. The environmental impact of plastic extends not only to plastic in the water, but also the water it takes to produce the plastic.
The water footprint of plastic comes to about 28 gallons of water per pound of plastic, when combining the blue water footprint (water used in production) and and grey water footprint (water pollution). The water associated with the huge amount plastic produced gets staggering when viewed in total.
According to the plastic waste study referenced above, from 2002 to 2014 approximately 3.83 billion MT of PET plastic resin was produced worldwide — this is equivalent to 29,000,000,000,000,000 plastic water bottles. The blue and grey water footprint for all that PET works out to about 91.8 billion m3 (which is like filling 693 billion bathtubs full of water).
With such a big water footprint (not to mention carbon footprint), take a second to think about whether you need to buy so many products sold in disposable plastic containers. FoodPrint has facts and ideas to help you cut out the large amount of plastic in your life with their report on food packaging.