SodaStream takes to the green road
By Siobhan Leathley,
We Kiwis aren’t the clean, green, recycling machines we think we are: 77 percent of plastics go unrecycled each year, resulting in 252,000 tonnes of plastic waste in our landfills. And SodaStream has decided to tackle this head-on with a bit of a PR stunt aimed at giving us a wake-up call about what all that rubbish looks like.
SodaStream will be travelling through New Zealand with what's being dubbed the SodaStream Cage, collecting empty cans and bottles in order to put a picture on how much we’re throwing away.
The tour starts at Bloom Family Festival in Matakana this weekend, and will be stopping at popular regional events and SodaStream stockists around the country to demonstrate the extent of the plastic waste problem in New Zealand.
SodaStream believes that by the end of the tour the amount of plastic collected will be the equivalent to one household’s plastic waste over three years.
The company hopes this project will help to reduce the 340 billion bottles that go unrecycled each year, globally. With one bottle taking 450 years to decompose, it's a bigger problem than many realise.
Comments
Sam Judd
I think this is a great project and a great idea, but I would like to know where you got the stat saying that a plastic bottle will decompose in 450 years from?
There is research out that says that the molecules in PET bottles never actually disappear entirely, so would like to find out who said that they do.
Thanks
Sam
Esther Goh
It seems to be one of those issues where consensus is difficult to achieve, but 450 years is the number cited by organisations such as Ocean Conservancy (http://www.slideshare.net/vicmanlapaz/pocket-guide-to-marine-debris-presentation).
Michael Smythe
Here is where I get confused. The faster something biodegrades when buried in the ground faster it generates greenhouse gas emissions - viz: methane which is 23x stronger than CO2. So is a biodegradable bottle better or worse than a PET bottle?
All power to Soda Stream burning fossil fuels to raise awareness by hauling a trailer but what is needed is a path of least resistance to maximise the recycling of PET bottles .
Florian
Landfill plastic is indeed a big issue and New Zealand is far behind most other developed countries in dealing with it sufficiently. There is no shortage of ideas, however, just like this British guy's invention of milk bottles made of recycled paper
http://blog.floriankaefer.com/2011/02/03/green-message-in-milk-bottle/
Apart from that, algae being the new hype at the moment, surely we could make truly biodegradable containers out of that…?
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