Thursday, January 29, 2009

Plastic bottle takes how long to decompose?

These numbers are just mind boggling.

We all know trash in the landfill is not a good idea. It takes a lot of time for things to decompose. We all know recycling is good for the environment. Just how good is it? Just read these numbers to realize how big of a mark you leave on this earth when you don't recycle.

Time Required To Degrade:
  1. Paper - 2 to 5 months
  2. Fruit - 6 months
  3. Plastic Bags - 10-20 years
  4. Diapers - 20 years
  5. Aluminium Cans - 80-100 years
  6. Plastic Bottles - 700 years
  7. Glass Bottles - 1 Million years
There is a visual disintegration timetable here but the numbers are a little different.

2 comments:

Samir said...

Not all that bad in the cosmic scheme of things.

Gaurav said...

100s of years is a bit too much IMO. Considering the fact that earth's population is rising, we will have other problems, resource sharing, than problems like our footprint on the world.