Most plastic is made from petrochemicals, which are chemicals formulated from oil. In order to create plastic, there must be oil drilled and pumped, and transported to where it is needed for the manufacturing process. This process itself is horribly damaging to the environment. Countless species lose their habitat and sources of clean water when oil drilling begins in a new site.

Once the oil is pumped out of the underground oilfield, it must be transported. This is done in many different ways. Sometimes it is put in barrels and shipped across the oceans in ships that can leak or spill. Other times it is pumped in gigantic pipelines across entire nations. Pipelines leak and poison groundwater, and sometimes encroach upon sovereign native land. Large companies that need plastic don’t care about any of this, as long as the supply doesn’t stop and demand stays level or increases.

Plastic bottles are one of the ways plastic is used in packaging that is the most dangerous. There are nearly 500,000,000,000 plastic water bottles made every year, with nearly one million sold every single minute of every single day. This leads to an incredible amount of plastic waste, with a tiny percentage of bottles ever being recycled.