How the plastic bottle went from being a miraculous container to a despised waste.

What distinguishes bottles from other plastic products born in the post-World War II consumer boom is the speed with which the beverage bottle, now ubiquitous around the world, has gone from convenience to curse. The transition took place in a single generation.

“The plastic bottle transformed the beverage industry and changed our habits in many ways,” says Peter Gleick, co-founder and president emeritus of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, and author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.

“We have become a society that seems to think that if we don’t have water at hand, terrible things will happen. It’s a bit ridiculous. It’s not like anyone died of thirst in the old days,” he says.

By 2016, when bottled water sales in the United States officially surpassed soft drinks, the world had woken up to the growing plastic waste crisis. The backlash against the glut of discarded bottles clogging waterways, polluting oceans and littering our interior has been swift. Suddenly, carrying plastic water bottles around just isn’t cool anymore.

What's cool is using them: Hip fashion means designer clothes made from recycled water bottles. There's even a growing market for luxury, refillable stainless steel bottles, including a limited-edition bottle covered in thousands of Swarovski crystals that sells for nearly $2,000.

Plastic bottles and bottle caps rank third and fourth as the most collected plastic trash items at Ocean Conservancy’s annual beach cleanups in more than 100 countries. Activists are focusing on the bottle as next on the list to be banned, after plastic bags. The small towns of Concord, Massachusetts, and Bundanoon, Australia, have already banned bottles, as have numerous public parks, museums, universities and zoos in Europe and the United States.

You can read the original here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-bottles