Questions about environmental protection

During the transport of bottled water, a lot of CO₂ is produced. In fact: One liter (33oz) of bottled water produces 202,74g (0.44 lb) of CO₂. The average German consumes 181.4 liters (~48 gal) of bottled water per year. If everyone in Germany switched to tap water right now, we could save about three metric tons (~6600lb) of water every year.

According to Germany’s national environmental protection agency, the UBA, it takes 450 years on average. However, nobody really knows the exact number, since plastic was invented only about 150 years ago. And even so, only a part of the bottle will disintegrate, while the rest becomes microplastics. Consequentially, we even find microplastics in our food (e.g. fish) more regularly. More Information at Sattleger et. al. 2019.

Every year, the Germans use about 9 billion liters (2.3bln gal) of disposable waterbottles. So on average, that means we use 9 billion water bottles. Sodas and juices make up for another 7 billion bottles. And on top of that, there’s currently more than one billion recyclable bottles in circulation. Source: Umweltbundesamt – UBA / German national environmental protection agency. (Warning: This source is German only)