Join us in the fight against plastic bottles

10 July, 2022

Why do we need to fight?

Water is essential but using plastic isn't! On average, we use 156 single-use plastic bottles every year, and globally, 1500 plastic bottles are consumed every second!
What is the problem using single use plastics?
Plastic pollution is everywhere—at the top of mountains, the bottom of seas and, scarily, the placentas of unborn babies. Microscopic plastic particles, micro plastics, now seem to have reached levels of pervasiveness only matched by bacteria.

And, unless it's been burned, every piece ever made still exists somewhere on our planet - meaning that up to 12.7 million tonnes of the stuff ends up in the ocean every year.

BUT, what's worse is that most plastic is made from fossil fuels. It's not just a pollution problem, it's also a climate problem.When you use plastic water bottles, it’s warming up and littering our planet at the same time. 

 For every 6 bottles people buy, only 1 is recycled



For those 5 bottles not recycled, it takes 450 years to decompose. Ending up in our landfills, litter, and pollute waterways and oceans.
This means that for every plastic bottle that you haven’t recycled, it is still on our planet. Overtime, plastic decomposes into smaller pieces, microplastics. These are extremely harmful to our environment, as animals can ingest them and spread throughout the body. The extreme increase of microplastics has also led to particles being found in humans. 
The energy required to produce and transport plastic water bottles, could fuel 1.5m cars every year 

The problem is, until companies stop selling them, people will keep using them. This is where you come in. 

 
We know there's a problem, so how can we find the solution?
We need to come together to increase refill stations globally. We feel the biggest challenge for people making the switch to a reusable water bottle, is that there’s not enough locations for you to fill up your bottle. 

The next step is to push for a culture shift. To normalise going into a cafe and being able to fill up your bottle without feeling awkward. And despite water refill stations increasing, they aren’t everywhere. We don’t understand why we haven’t seen a global shift. It should be easy to refill your bottle wherever you are.

So the question is, how much are you prepared to pay? 
If we really want to see a change, we need to do something more thought provoking. We need to hold other businesses accountable. You also need to hold yourself accountable.

We’re not stupid, we understand that business can’t just stop selling plastic water bottles at a service station or cafe as we don’t expect them to completely remove this stream of income. But by putting pressure on those services to implement a refill station, whereby they can charge for each refill, can ensure the plastic bottle consumption reduces. 

This personal cost won’t reflect the amount you would usually spend on the average for a plastic water bottle. If you take a look at the graph below, you can see the hidden cost of plastic bottles. The profit margins on bottled water is extremely high, it’s between 50%-200%.



What can you do now before we see the global shift? 
  1. Purchase Agood Bottle
  2. Fill up your water bottle at home before you set off for the day.
  3. Build up your confidence to walk into any shop or restaurant and ask for them to fill up your water bottle. Be proud to be conscious. 
  4. Find your nearest refill station in your local area here. Either if you are on the go in your local area or travelling, these apps will ensure you can always find a clean and safe water refill station. If you are a cafe or restaurant, you can even include your shop for a refill station. Join the movement for a plastic-free world.
Not every reusable bottle is as good as it seems. Firstly, you have of course a lot of reusable plastic water bottles. I think it’s clear to see that there's no real environmental benefit purchasing one of those. You are still consuming plastic and heating up the planet. Secondly you have virgin steel vs recycled steel bottles. 

Our Agood Bottles are on a mission to reduce the amount of virgin steel produced. One way to reduce the steel industry's emission and resource consumption, you can buy products like ours which use recycled steel. By buying one of our bottles you save 392g of iron ore. 

Join the good fight