WASHINGTON — An innovative design and a creative concept could be the answer to one of the world’s most troubling environmental problems: plastic pollution.
The U.S. uses an estimated each year, and of them end up in landfills, where they take an estimated to break down.
Manufacturing water bottles is another environmental headache. the U.S. bottled-water industry uses roughly 50 million barrels of oil each year to make, refrigerate and transport bottles of water.
Renee Sharp, research director at the , says concerns about water-bottle waste don’t stop there.
“Most plastic doesn’t really ever break down; it just gets chewed up into smaller and smaller bits,” she says, saying plastic has been found in the stomachs of birds, fish and other marine life.
“When you put that all together, it is creating this really, really massive environmental problem.”
But a European design team poses a question that could chip away at plastic pollution: What if you could have your water bottle and eat it, too?
Rodrigo Garc
