DON BOSCO CHURCH VADODARA

This is a 4-minute and 7-second video about what happens to plastic when we throw it away.

At first, we have to see how these bottles are made. In oil refineries, oil and gas molecules chemically bond together to form polyethylene terephthalate which continues to bond with each other to form small plastic beads that are melted at high temperatures to mould them into plastic bottles.

These bottles are filled, bought, consumed and then discarded. Now what is the state of these bottles is the real story.
For now, imagine three such bottles.

Bottle 1- This bottle is collected by the garbage truck with the other garbage and dumped in the landfill. While it sits there, rainwater is soaked up in the landfill and absorbs the water-soluble compounds which are deadly. By bonding, they create leachate, a toxic soluble matter. They flow through the groundwater, streams, and other surface water bodies which can kill marine life.

Bottle 2- This bottle is dumped into the sea and floats away somewhere. After months in the sea, it is pulled by a current to a dumpster called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Like this, there are five other such garbage patches all over the world. Thinking to be food, plastic is consumed by marine life. Plastic makes them full, when they are not able to digest it, they are unable eat food, so they starve to death. Plastic can damage the entire ecosystem even if one of the species eats it.

Bottle 3 - Now this bottle has a happy ending. This bottle is taken to the recycling plant which converts them back to microplastic so that they can be reused to make another plastic material. Therefore, bottle 3 has the best ending.

What happens to bottles, we buy?