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Practical and light, the plastic bottle has become a part of our consumption habits. But it is also very polluting, between its manufacture and its transport.
Every year, around the world, nearly 480 billion plastic bottles are sold, including 5.5 billion in France alone. This means that a French person buys on average 82 bottles per year. Appeared in shops almost half a century ago, the plastic bottle has many advantages such as its lightness, the fact of being able to transport it easily or its practicality, even if it means having to consume a lot of raw materials to manufacture it.
To make a plastic bottle, you need oil, coal, gas and water, among other things. Its transport is also a problem, because a bottle travels nearly 300 kilometers before being consumed. But only one in two bottles is recycled in France. A high figure compared to Europe (20%) or the planet as a whole (7%). On average, a ton of plastic lands in the ocean every two seconds.