Every Earth Day is a reminder there's still more work to do. An estimated 8 million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year, and single-use plastic, including disposable water bottles, accounts for nearly 40% of all plastic waste.
Plastic is costly, environmentally and physically. Here's the actual impact of single-use plastic, and how switching to a water filter helps.
What's the Impact of Single-Use Plastic Bottles on the Planet?
Americans purchase roughly 50 billion water bottles a year, averaging about 13 per person per month. Of all the plastic ever produced, an estimated 79% still sits in landfills or the natural environment rather than being recycled.
Single-use plastics that don't get recycled largely end up in landfills, where they don't break down easily. Instead, they leach microplastics and other unwanted material into land, soil, and water, and the consequences of a single plastic bottle can play out over centuries.
How Can I Reduce My Single-Use Plastic Waste?
Small changes add up. One of the most effective steps you can take is putting down single-use plastic bottles for a ZeroWater filtration device. A single filter can handle hundreds of gallons of water a year, which means far less packaging waste than buying bottled water on repeat.
One ZeroWater 5-stage filter can prevent up to 300 single-use plastic bottles from reaching the landfill. Each filter uses ion exchange technology and is IAPMO certified to reduce lead, chromium, and PFOA/PFOS, plus up to 99.6% of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). The result is better-tasting water with a lot less environmental impact.
Our Sustainability Commitment
Choosing ZeroWater means saving hundreds of single-use plastic bottles a year without sacrificing taste. Our products are also designed to be low-waste. We've moved from screw-on-top lids to a yogurt-lid style, cutting the plastic used in our filters by 20%, which saves an estimated 357,000 pounds of plastic annually, or the equivalent of about 16.2 million single-use plastic bottles.
Once customers are done with a filter or device, our recycling program keeps it out of the landfill. You can send used filters directly to our recycling facility, where cardboard, plastics, and resins get processed into something new. We recycle more than 10,000 filters annually and are continuing to look for ways to reduce the impact of our products.
Choose ZeroWater This Earth Day
Make better-tasting water more sustainable with our lineup of filtration devices. Our 5-stage filters remove virtually all total dissolved solids, like salts, minerals, and metals, and are IAPMO certified to reduce lead, chromium, and PFOA/PFOS in tap water. We're proud to make products that help you and your family cut waste this Earth Day and beyond.
