Surf Fridays!

Sometimes I like the combination of having serious facts mixed with something funny. So I wanted to share some facts I just learned from the amazing Surfrider Foundation, about plastic water bottles. Then end it with a very silly scene of Batman and the Joker surfing - from the 1967 episode, "Surf's Up, Joker's Under".

- Every piece of (petroleum-based) plastic ever manufactured still exists.

- Plastic in the ocean may be one of the most alarming of today's environmental stories. Plastics, like diamonds, are forever because plastics do NOT biodegrade - no naturally occurring organisms can break these polymers down.

- Over 300,000 pieces of plastic per square mile have been found in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. Eighty percent of the plastic comes from land-based sources.

- 100,000 marine mammals and 2 millions sea birds die every year after ingesting or being caught in marine debris.

- Plastic is the most common type of marine litter world-wide.

- Americans consumed 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person, made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. Recycling rate for PET is 23%, which means we pitch 38 billion watter bottles a year into landfills - more than $1 billion worth of plastic.

- North Americans spent $15,000,000,000 on water in plastic bottles last year ($46,000,000,000 spent globally).

- Bottled water has massive hidden costs; think about the process to enable a New Yorker to drink water from Fiji.

Alternatives to plastic water bottles?
- Aluminum bottles (such as these pretties)
- Multi-use plastic bottles (like this cool one)
- Other bottle alternatives (like Klean Kanteen & Biota)


"But watch Batman trimming!"
"Batman's doing a nose pullout!"