Pls take lids off, empty water/juice bottles or water's trapped, lost "forever"

[FrenzyTickles]

Try not to buy plastic, but at least please empty all bottles & don't throw out with lids on.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/woman-warns-against-dangerous-phenomenon-120000467.html

The Cool Down
Woman warns against the dangerous phenomenon that is ‘trapped water’: ‘I’ve never thought about this’
Jeremiah Budin
November 26, 2023·2 min read
2k


One TikToker recently created a video titled “Free the water!” to inform her viewers about the dangers of “trapped water” and the need to dump out liquids contained in plastic bottles that aren’t going to be used.

“I’m on this quest to dump out any water that gets trapped in plastic,” Kati (@spreadyourdreams) told her followers. “Because once it’s trapped in these plastic bottles, we have now lost it basically forever.”

According to the Texas Water Quality Association, trapped water is indeed a big problem.


“In the US alone, we waste 22 million gallons of water each year in landfills due to trapped water inside plastic water bottles,” the organization wrote on the QWET website. “That is 22 million gallons of water that we will never get back into the Earth’s water cycle.”

The organization went on to point out that fresh water makes up an extremely small fraction of all the water on Earth, and that there is no new water being created — the water that exists on our planet and in the atmosphere is all there is. That means that when we effectively take it out of circulation by trapping it indefinitely in plastic, that decreases the total water supply for all life.

And of course, buying plastic water bottles in the first place is something to be avoided whenever possible.

Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, according to UNEP, with a massive number of them ending up in landfills or the ocean. Plastic is made out of petrochemicals, does not biodegrade, and very slowly breaks down into microplastics which essentially remain in water (and in the humans and animals that drink that water) forever.

Luckily, Kati’s message seems to be spreading. The TikTok video has already been viewed over half a million times, garnering over 2,000 comments, many from people who had never before considered this issue but now pledged to dump out any trapped water they could find.

“This is wild, I’ve never thought about this!” wrote one commenter.

“I love this, you are so right! I never really thought about it and the magnitude of the effect this common practice has long term,” wrote another.

“I use all the extra water at the bottom of the water bottles we drink for my plants!” wrote a third.

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[milagros317]

Desalination is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance... Saltwater (especially sea water) is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation... Desalination is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on cost-effective provision of fresh water for human use. Along with recycled wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-independent water resources.

Yes, it would be better to spill out all liquids before discarding the bottles.
No, it is not true that no new fresh water is ever created.

The first industrial desalination plant in the United States opened in Freeport, Texas in 1961 with the hope of bringing water security to the region after a decade of drought. Vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson attended the plant's opening on June 21, 1961. President John F. Kennedy recorded a speech from the White House, describing desalination as "a work that in many ways is more important than any other scientific enterprise in which this country is now engaged."

There are now about 21,000 desalination plants in operation around the globe. The biggest ones are in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The world's largest desalination plant is located in Saudi Arabia (Ras Al-Khair Power and Desalination Plant) with a capacity of 1,401,000 cubic meters per day.

 

[FrenzyTickles]

Thank you, those are great points, but the problem isn't converting salt to fresh water, it's that "no new water" overall is created, salt or fresh.

There's a limited amount of any sort of water on this planet, and to have "22 million gallons a year" trapped in plastic bottles is a serious problem.

People keep lids on the bottles of (water, energy drinks, etc.) to keep the liquid from spilling in garbage cans, but they're not thinking about what happens to that trapped liquid down the line... They need to spill it out, find a water fountain or a plant, and not put the cap on the bottle they're throwing out.

We really need to recycle plastic efficiently also, (or just not use it), another overwhelming dilemma, but the crucial water loss is something I hadn't thought of either.

 

[milagros317]

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (332,519,000 cubic miles) of water on the planet. A cubic mile is the volume of a cube measuring one mile on each side. Of this vast volume of water, NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center estimates that 1,335,000,000 cubic kilometers (321,003,271 cubic miles) is in the ocean.

That's enough water to fill about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk containers!

22,000,000 gallons is totally insignificant compared to 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons.

 

[MrMacphisto]

One misconception about plastic is this assumption that it doesn't "biodegrade." That's not actually true. Plastic actually decomposes pretty quickly without the use of stabilizers. The stabilizers used in conjunction with plastic are the issue. If industries decreased the use of stabilizers, then the use of plastic containers wouldn't be as much of an issue. Granted, that would reduce the shelf life of many products.

 

[FrenzyTickles]

Ok, so the greater problem is the accessibility of drinkable water. The availability of that (fresh) water is dwindling, especially as demand increases with growing populations.
Global demand far outstrips human manipulation. And distribution is more limited or non-existent in poorer areas.

Trapped water (and/in plastic that takes "forever" to biodegrade) are simply unnecessary problems that will have a significant negative impact, if they don't already, that first-worlders (especially big businesses) can prevent if we'd just bother.
*

----------------- From https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity :

Water covers 70% of our planet, and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However, freshwater—the stuff we drink, bathe in, irrigate our farm fields with—is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.

As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation is also a problem for 2.4 billion people—they are exposed to diseases, such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other water-borne illnesses. Two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone.

Many of the water systems that keep ecosystems thriving and feed a growing human population have become stressed. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared. Agriculture consumes more water than any other source and wastes much of that through inefficiencies. Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others.

At the current consumption rate, this situation will only get worse. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. And ecosystems around the world will suffer even more.